One of the things I get asked most often about freelancing is how to find new clients. The truth is, it’s a real mix of things. Originally most of my clients came from Twitter and word of mouth. Now, I tend to get more from networking events like Ladies Who Latte and through my blog/website thanks to a bit of SEO. I don’t really believe you can rely on one type of client attraction method, unless your market or industry is really niche. The more you put yourself out there, the more client enquiries you should get!
I’d love to know how you’ve all built up your client base. How do you find most of your clients? Are you all about the offline networking, or do most of your clients find you thanks to Google and Twitter? Leave your vote below, then let me know what your favourite way is to find new clients.
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I have to say the majority of my clients have come from being recommended by people I scouted out on Twitter, and made sure I met them at events I saw they were going to.
From there managed to show them my work and either worked for them, for their clients or recommended as someone they could trust to get the job done.
I think there is something to be said for persistence in this shifting sector. 🙂
Frankly, I have left the passive part of my blog for now as I really wanted to be more aggressive in sales and securing deals. I find it’s much easier once you’ve met someone to get that done.
Funnily enough, I’ve found the opposite, in that aggressive sales really doesn’t work for me. I work towards friendly, long-term working relationships rather than towards ‘the sale’ which seems to work well for me as I’ve been working with several of my clients for over three years. Particularly as I tend to work with women more than men, and I know I personally don’t respond well to a ‘hard sell’. I think generally in business there does seem to be that gender split, and it makes sense really – working to our natural traits.
I think it varies from business to business and industry to industry. And I agree that persistence is needed, but I think it’s possible to combine that with a softer approach.
Ahh, yeah. Whilst I say aggressive I’m not a hard arsed businessman AT ALL. I am a friendly face who knows the digital world. It just got to a point where I realised I needed to ask for money, because I got too friendly with a lot of people. “Aggressive” for me was chasing down opportunities and making sure I got meetings to close deals.
I have to say I generally tend to work with more women, mainly because they seem to be the better networkers and are superb at recommending if you do a good job.
The best piece of advice I ever got though, was charge to pitch to companies If you charge for the research and proposal phase you grow to know the business amazingly well and have a working relationship before any work really starts.