0:00:00
The title of this video is the three best places to get web design clients fast. And while I am going to disclose what those three places are or those three methods really, and that’s by the way, that’s of the recording of this video. It’s not to say that this is never going to change. I do wanna have a broader conversation about getting leads. And I do wanna connect with those of you who are struggling to get leads. And this is very common for people in the early stages of building their agency or their freelance business. It can be difficult to get traction and momentum. You’re also looking at a lot of different options for where do I invest my time and effort when it comes to trying to get new business.
0:00:40
But this is not a challenge that is solely faced by people who are in the early stages of business. There are agencies and freelancers who have been around for years. And you can go through dry spells. You can go through periods where there are no leads coming in. So when it comes to getting new business for your agency or your freelance business, I think what you wanna focus on the most is diversification. You wanna have a few different sources for bringing in leads. You don’t wanna rely on just one source. And this is for those of you, even if you haven’t run into this problem yet, if you have one source of leads, maybe it’s referrals, maybe it’s some other channel, I would strongly encourage you to diversify because even though things are good right now, things can go bad.
0:01:26
Things can go south and you don’t wanna put all of your eggs in one basket. This is true in various aspects of life, right? So let’s go ahead and talk before we get to the, what I think are the three best places to get web design clients fast. Let’s talk first about what fast actually means. Fast in my opinion is in a matter of weeks or two to three months. So if you are thinking, hey, I’m gonna implement one of these strategies and get a lead and a client next week, you may need to reset your expectations. Now I’m not saying that these methods can’t get you a client next week.
0:01:59
They very well could, they very well could. So it is a possibility. But when you’re going into this and you’re gonna implement the three strategies that I’m going to lay out for you, I want you to have the expectation that you need to be working at these things for the next two to three months, for sure. And you can work on all three of them, you can work on one of them, it’s really going to depend on your time and your resources. And that’s the next thing we’re gonna talk about is the available channels to you. So what do we have available to us as different methods? One, we could do SEO.
0:02:35
That was an option that I had. If you go to digitalgravee.co, this is my agency website, at least at the current time, you’re not going to see much SEO being done. It’s a two-page website. It doesn’t even have a portfolio. There’s really not a lot there. And that is by design. It’s because I’ve chosen to go a route that does not require those things. And I think that’s very important to understand. So SEO is going to take a long time. It’s going to take a lot of effort. It is one of those strategies that you can expedite things if you have money, but it’s still, we can’t control Google’s timeline.
0:03:09
There’s also a risk involved of, are we actually going to rank in the top positions in a way that’s actually gonna bring in quality leads and quality clients, given the fact that there is a ton of competition out there. We are in an industry where people know about SEO, often do SEO for their own clients. These are the people you are going to be competing against. You are not a small local service business, competing against other brick and mortar who just learned what SEO was a couple weeks ago. You are competing against people who have been doing this stuff, and they know this stuff, and they’re trying to actively beat you.
0:03:45
This is a different animal when it comes to competition. So the risk factor in SEO is higher. It’s going to take more resources to win the SEO game in our particular niche and industry than it is perhaps for other businesses. So that’s something that I factored in, and I chose not to go the SEO route, even though I have a pretty extensive background in SEO. What else can we do to get leads? We can do a lot of advertising. We can do Facebook, brand awareness advertising, we can do Facebook lead advertising, we can do LinkedIn advertising. We can do advertising on YouTube potentially. Advertising takes a bit of money, and if you want results anytime soon, it’s probably going to take more money, because obviously you have to collect data, you have to go through an optimization process.
0:04:36
The more you spend, the faster you can collect that data, the faster you can find the right people to target, and put the right content in front of them and test various pieces of content. Of course, there is the content production side of things that also comes into play with all of that. So it does require a lot of effort, it does require money, and it is still a bit risky, because you are advertising to cold audiences, you’re trying to convince them that they should do business with you. You don’t even really know if these people need a website at the current time. At least with SEO, you know what they’re searching for, and you could target people who are actually searching for what you’re offering, but with Google, YouTube, I should say YouTube advertising, we’ll talk about PPC in just a minute, but YouTube advertising, Facebook advertising, a lot of this is just interruption marketing.
0:05:25
You’re just interrupting people with your advertising, and you’re hoping that it’s the right person at the right time, but you really don’t have all that much control over it. So there is a risk factor there, you can lose out on money, you can lose out on the time that you’re spending running these campaigns and testing these campaigns and trying to get this stuff to work, not to mention that you are going to have to do a better job in your home base marketing. So my website wouldn’t really work if I’m running cold ads on Facebook to certain audiences, because they’re gonna come back to my website and they’re gonna start poking around and they’re not gonna see a portfolio, they’re not gonna see articles, they’re not gonna see a lot of things that they might expect to see, and thus they probably are not going to convert.
0:06:10
So if I wanted those strategies to work, I would have to put a lot more effort into landing pages. I would have to put a lot more effort into my website in general, I would have to have a lot more testimonials. I would have to have a lot more, a lot of things. So I looked at that opportunity and I said, nope, not for me right now, not yet. I may do these things in the future, I may do SEO in the future, I may do more in-depth advertising in the future. Now keep in mind that I am also juggling many different things. So I don’t have the time resources required to do everything in terms of marketing my agency. I have to pick lanes that are high value lanes, that are consistent lanes, that are low risk lanes.
0:06:50
I’m also running digital ambition. I have to produce content for that, for the inner circle. I have to produce content for automatic CSS. I actually have to work on the automatic CSS product. I have to work on the frames product at some point. I have to get around to marketing frames. So I have to really 80-20 my efforts when it comes to marketing on the agency side of things. The agency is only one piece of the puzzle for me. And so when I say that these are 80-20 high value channels that are going to consistently produce results, that’s why I say they’re the three best ways to get web design clients fast right now. But that’s not it, what else can we do? We can be content producers, right?
0:07:32
So we could produce agency related content and put that content organically on YouTube, put that content organically on LinkedIn, put that content organically in a lot of places. We could do guest blogging. There’s a lot of ways that we can be content producers and the strategy of content production is that you’re going to educate your audience, you’re going to inform your audience, you’re going to entertain your audience, and in doing that, you’re going to collect leads, and then you’re going to nurture those leads into sales. That content is going to give you the brand awareness. That content is going to bring you opportunities. But if we look at that again, this is very much like SEO.
0:08:11
The runway for that kind of strategy is very long. And the competition is very strong. There are a lot of people, a lot of agencies, a lot of digital marketers, producing lots and lots and lots of content. There is no shortage of digital marketing content to consume. So the way that you produce content, you’re going to have to find a creative angle there. The amount of content that you produce, it’s going to take a lot of time. It’s going to take a lot of effort, especially if you wanted to be high quality content. And then there’s no guarantee that you’re actually going to get traction and momentum.
0:08:45
So there is a lot of risk involved. There’s high risk, high competition. So that was a strategy that I can obviously do. It’s a strategy that I use for digital ambition, for the inner circle, for automatic CSS. And you can see that it works very, very, very well. But on the agency side of things, it didn’t feel like a good fit for the agency side of things. It felt too high effort. It felt too high risk. It felt too high competition. And so I’m not up on, I’m not bullish, as they say, on that as a viable channel. So let’s shift gears and let’s actually get into what I think are the three most viable channels for getting web design clients fast, getting them consistently, fairly in my estimation, fairly low risk and fairly low competition as well.
0:09:40
The first method is strategic partnerships. What I mean by strategic partnerships is another word for it is the milk and cookies strategy. If you sell cookies, and I’ve said this before on other videos and other trainings, if you sell cookies, it’s a really good idea to find companies who sell milk and partner together and share each other’s customer base. Because if I sell cookies that are fantastic, obviously cookies go well with milk, people who like cookies often like milk and need milk and want milk. So the milk people, they market my cookies. And I market their milk. And so we’re sharing with the same exact customer base.
0:10:20
They already have a base of customers, they’ve attracted to their milk. I may have a base of customers that I’ve attracted to my cookies. Maybe if we’re both in the early stages, it’s going to be, we don’t have big audiences to share. And you wouldn’t really consider these to be audiences, but big pools of leads to share. But you can absolutely grow together. And there’s another way that strategic partnerships work, even if you can’t immediately share a pool of potential leads with another agency or another freelancer. And we’ll talk about just a second what kinds of people to be creating these strategic partnerships with.
0:10:56
But you can actually come in immediately and just simply fill a need for them. Because the milk and cookie strategy doesn’t really highlight this as much. But in the real world, when we talk about a web design agency partnering with a digital marketing agency, as an example, a lot of digital marketing agencies, and that’s going to be one of them. So we’re going to get into what are the best people to make connections with. A lot of digital marketing agencies do not do web design, but they do work for clients who need web design. You see how that works? So you don’t have to say, hey, I can share my leads with you.
0:11:32
You share your leads with me. A lot of times, you create the relationship. And they simply have that immediate need that needs to be filled. And there’s a bunch of different ways you can work out these strategic partnerships. You can just do a straight up referral process. So this digital marketing agency has a client that needs a website. They refer them over to you. The client ends up liking your proposal. They sign on. They say, good. I’d love to be a client. Let’s do this.
0:11:58
And you kick back a commission to that agency that did the referral. Another way to do this is that you create a partner proposal. So let’s say a new client comes along, and they’re going to need digital marketing. They’re going to need web design. They’re going to need all of these things together. And so you guys partner and create a one proposal that includes all the services and all of the costs. Maybe it’s even in a retainer format. You decide what the breakdown of the money is going to be throughout this agreement. And then the client signs, and you both provide the work. That’s another way to do it.
0:12:33
You can do, there’s two or three other really creative ways to structure these partnerships. That’s really not the biggest thing. Like you’re going to figure that out. And in fact, each strategic partner that you work on recruiting is going to have a preference for how those deals are structured. So you may end up with one type of deal over here and another type of deal over here. So all you have to remember is there are multiple creative ways to create these partnerships. We just have to get creative and come to an agreement on how we want to handle this. Digital marketing agencies are a really good one. Branding agencies are another really good one.
0:13:12
I have gotten much, much, much work from brand designers. And by the way, when I say create these strategic partnerships, you can absolutely create them anywhere in the world. If you are in the UK, you can partner with people in the United States. If you are in the United States, you can partner with people in Australia. There are no borders online, thankfully. That’s a really good advantage of all of us doing this work online. However, what I will say is it’s often easier to get to land these strategic partnerships in your local area. And the reason being is sometimes people like to put a face to a name in real life.
0:13:50
Sometimes people like to go out for coffee. Sometimes people like to know that you’re in the local vicinity. They can reach out and touch you. It feels like just a little bit of a mental cushion, I guess. It’s like a little bit of a warm hug feeling because this guy is near me. And so if we ever need to meet up, it’s unlikely that it would ever happen. But in their minds, they’re much more comfortable with this type of relationship. Versus somebody completely oversees where it’s always like, hmm, do I really know who they are in real life? Can I really trust them? I haven’t seen them in person.
0:14:27
I haven’t seen their family. I haven’t seen the area they live in. I don’t know. I don’t know. And so with those unknowns, comes a little bit, I guess, less trust, a little bit more risk. It can be more difficult. It can be more challenging to create those types of relationships. So if you’re thinking, hey, I’m just going to go on LinkedIn. I’m going to ping some people. It’s all going to work out. It may be a little bit more difficult than that. So I do want to give you some guidance on that side of things.
0:14:53
LinkedIn is a fantastic way to reach out to these types of people. Of course, I would pull up. And if it’s in a local area, this is again, it’s going to be much easier when it’s in a local area. Pull up their websites. Connect with them on all different platforms. Connect with them on Instagram. And shoot them a DM on Instagram. Figure out which platform they seem to be most engaged on. Because LinkedIn, we still have the downside of LinkedIn. The downside of LinkedIn is that everybody is in everybody’s DMs on LinkedIn. And it is just, man, moths to a light. And it’s nasty sometimes.
0:15:30
And it’s, it’s picky. It’s like, ugh, it doesn’t feel good. I go on LinkedIn because I’m like, I am been on LinkedIn in a while. And suddenly I’m being mobbed by anybody and everybody trying to sell me their wares. And it’s hard to break through the noise on LinkedIn sometimes. So figure out what other platforms are these people on. Connect with them there, friend them there, send them a DM, and be very low-key about this stuff. Don’t send them a pitch. Don’t send them a, hey, I want to make our strategic partnership. Hey, I want to be your cookies to your milk. Okay, like these things, probably a little too forward.
0:16:05
So what I would highly recommend doing is sending a simple message, something like, hey, my name is XYZ, I’m in your local area. Just thought I would say hi, connect, love what you’re doing. And maybe even say something specific about their work or their site or something like that. So that they can see, hey, this person actually looked into me. This doesn’t seem like a canned response. It seems like a real human. They’re not asking for anything from me. Just see if the person replies back and says, hey, that’s awesome. I, you know, yeah, I’d love to connect whatever. And then maybe a conversation starts with natural and organic. And eventually, you got to slow play it a little bit, right?
0:16:44
It’s like, you know, you’re on that first date. You don’t want to, don’t be too aggressive. All right, on the first date, you just take a slow. All right, let it simmer. And you’re going to be much better off. There is a lot of people who tell me all the time Kevin, this strategy doesn’t work. And I’m like, well, show me, show me your execution of the strategy. And I read the messages. And I’m like, obviously, I get, yes, of course, this would not work. So I did want to put in a little tidbit about just being casual, just taking it slow, don’t expect relationships to form overnight.
0:17:17
Go ahead and nurture that. Like treat the person like an actual human being, not as an object that you want something from. And you’re going to get much further in making those connections. Another one that I’ve had a lot of success with, I actually have a guy that has helped me land some of the biggest projects that I’ve done, owns a data and analytics agency. And so they don’t do web design. They don’t do digital marketing. They do advanced analytics for companies. And because advanced analytics, typically is involved in higher level enterprise type companies. Well, those opportunities have a reason. And it’s been absolutely fantastic.
0:17:54
And because of the way his, this relationship works, and this is a different relationship than my other relationships, almost all of those projects are retainer based. And so he gets a kickback as a portion of the retainer. So he’s happy he gets a consistent revenue every month. He’s not actually doing any work other than helping to maintain the relationship, showing up at some meetings, just being involved because he’s doing work for these clients as well. So it’s a really easy thing. He brings the lead, I sell the project. He gets that kickback, it’s recurring revenue. And it all works out really well as these are high ticket projects.
0:18:31
So those are three examples. There are more examples. I can maybe make a complete list at some point. But I want you to get creative as well. You know who you’re trying to target. Who else serves those people, but doesn’t directly compete with you? All of these people have the potential to create opportunities for you. And you have the potential to create opportunities for them. And I will say that the more you reciprocate, the more you feed them opportunities. So when I’m doing websites for people, and they say, hey, we’re also interested in doing branding, the more I feed these branding projects to brand designers, the more likely they are to turn around and feed me web designer digital marketing projects.
0:19:16
And now some of them do web design, right? But if I already landed the web design side of things, I’m OK with bringing them in for the branding side. And then sometimes if they don’t want to share a web design client, that client does eventually need digital marketing. And if they don’t do digital marketing, and I do, that still comes back to me for the digital marketing side of things. So these are just very, very valuable relationships to have. And what you’re going to find here, the magic, the secret sauce to this strategy, is that these people are pre-sold when they arrive. I mentioned before how my website does not have a portfolio.
0:19:52
It doesn’t have a ton of testimonials on it. It’s got like a case study, and it says what I do. And it’s got decent copy. But really, I said it doesn’t need a lot of other bells and whistles, because almost all the people who come to me are pre-sold in some form or fashion. We’re going to talk about this more as we get to the other two strategies in just a second. But with this primary strategy, if you think about this, it’s based on referrals. But it’s not a typical kind of referral where a past client talks to somebody else and says, oh, yeah, if you’re interested in this, or you need this, talk to this guy, it’s another expert in the industry, who is pre-selling the client.
0:20:32
And by the way, when I formulate these relationships, they kind of know what my qualifications for a client are. They know, hey, the client has to be willing to spend at least $5,000 on a site, okay? And so if the client’s not willing to spend $5,000, they don’t waste my time referring them to me. So they kind of pre-qualify these clients, and because it’s a referral from another expert, when this person arrives at my doorstep, so to speak, all I have to do is have a nice conversation with them, show interest in their company, lay out the services and the processes, and as long as the final numbers are we’re able to work those out, typically I’m getting the projects.
0:21:11
There isn’t a lot of, oh, well, we got RFPs floating out here, and we’ve got 17 bid that we’re considering from all these other people. I get to skip all of that stuff. And if they do have quotes from other people, it’s all right because the referral from another expert that they’re already working with makes me jump the line. So not only am I getting consistent leads from these relationships, they’re leads that are easy to convert. So you look at this as, you know, what is the real downside? We talked about these other channels, you know, it either takes time or it takes money, and then there’s no guarantee, there’s high risk, but I’m really short-cutting all of this because I’m going straight to the source where I know here are the people that have the people I want to connect with.
0:21:57
So I’m going to connect with them. They’re going to create the next level of the connection for me. It takes my time, doesn’t take any of my money, and at the end of the day, there really is no downside. Even if I don’t get leads from this person, it’s very possible that I can use this person for some sort of outsourcing or some sort of specific deliverable in my company that I don’t happen to do, like I talked about the branding designers, and I still get to make my clients happy at the end of the day. But almost always what I found is anytime you successfully create this relationship, you’re going to get leads from it. You’re going to get projects and clients from it. So the risk, the way that I see it, is very, very, very low.
0:22:40
The chance of success is very, very, very high. But you do have to connect with the right people. Strategy number two, and this one is the paid strategy. This one does require some money. Thankfully, it’s fairly easy to execute on though. And the reason I’m including it is because I do feel that it is just a base level of like, get your name out there, get in front of the right people, submit an inquiry, and start a discussion with you. You’re not going to close every single one of them, but at least you’re getting up to bat. As we all know, you can’t hit a home run, you can’t hit a base hit, you can’t do anything if you never swing, if you never get up to the plate. So this is a way for you to just at least be getting up to the plate with some opportunities, get your name out there, and have this thing be constantly running.
0:23:30
And when the referrals are in a little bit of a low, this other channel can maybe bring something in during that period. But it’s something that you always want to have running. And it’s PPC. And I have proven this to you inside of the inner circle by showing you, start to finish, how to set up a PPC campaign, even when things are not ideal. Even when the website doesn’t have a portfolio, even when the website doesn’t have a lot of testimonials. Good copy, decent copy, a case study, and it works. And I’ve shown you that I can get leads in the door, via PPC, close those leads, turn them into clients, and not only that, turn them into somewhat high dollar clients. Two of the leads, since I started running those Google ads, and since I did that training inside the inner circle, one of them was an $8,000 project.
0:24:22
And the second one is a $16,000 project. Those came in from a PPC, an fairly low ads spend for what I got in return. Those are leads that I never would have gotten had I not been running PPC ads. So while this does require some money, in my estimation, it’s still fairly low risk. I showed you exactly how I’m doing the targeting. And I would recommend, again, this is a strategy. You can easily deploy in a local area. It’s way more difficult to do this on a national scale, or do this maybe even outside of your country. If you’re doing this in a very local area, it’s even better. And again, it’s something that I would just say is a base level.
0:25:06
You should be out there for brand awareness with PPC, and you should be trying to do some lead conversion based on keywords that people are searching for. As we all know, anybody that types in web designer near me or something like that, that is somebody who is actively seeking what you have to offer. So you just have to get in front of them and say the right things and then get them to fill out an inquiry form. And there you are. You’re up, you’re at the plate, you’re ready to take some swings. And you may not hit it out of the park. You may strike out on the first one. You may strike out on the second one. You’re going to hit a base hit eventually.
0:25:38
You’re going to hit a double. You’re going to hit a triple. You’re going to hit a home run. It’s going to happen. You just have to make sure you’re getting up at the plate over and over and over again. All right, let’s talk about the third and final strategy that I want to cover. This is what I call those scope free work. And this is going to take some explanation because there are a lot of people who say, I don’t want to do any work for free. I don’t want to undervalue myself doing work for free. Brings down the value of our industry. There’s a lot of arguments against doing work for free.
0:26:11
But I have arguments against those arguments. And I’m going to lay them out for you. And I think they’re going to make a lot of sense to you when I lay it out in this fashion. Low scope free work. What this involves is finding people who will allow you to do a certain level of work for free. And then after that work is done, measure results or measure quality or whatever the measurement is going to be. And then decide if they still want you to stay on board doing the rest of the work for them. So I will give you an example. If you are a web designer because that’s primarily what we are talking about, you find some clients who need a new website.
0:26:51
They don’t have a great website right now. But you have vetted them. They do have money to pay for things. They’re not actively seeking to get things for free. They do have hopefully a growing brand. They do have aspirations to become a bigger company. That’s one side that you can target. There are a lot of offline companies who are very successful offline, very successful brick and mortar, very successful service based companies offline. But they really haven’t done much to take advantage of the online space. And so you can find these companies that do have plenty of money, plenty of brand recognition, plenty of reviews, and a really solid local brand, or even a semi-regional brand.
0:27:36
And you can come in and you can be that person who’s going to help them take advantage of these online opportunities. And how does that start? Well, it can start a number of different ways. What we want to do is a little bit of free work. That’s why I call it low scope. The biggest mistake that people make, especially when they’re first starting out, is saying, hey, I’ll do your entire website for free because I don’t have a lot of experience and I really need the experience and yada, yada, yada. And again, this is probably a best fit for people who are in the earlier stages. But even if you’re in a low, or it’s a type of client you’ve identified and you’re like, I really, really want that client.
0:28:12
And I don’t think there’s really any other way that I can get them. I want to get my foot in the door by demonstrating my expertise. This is still a good method for you to do this. But you would offer something like a free one page website, knowing very well that they eventually need a 30 page website. But you say, let’s start with a new one page website. And I want to prove to you that I can knock this out of the park. And after I’m done with this one page website, if you want to get in talks to expand this out into a much bigger, more involved project, I’m happy to have that discussion with you. But right now you have a website that’s doing absolutely nothing for your company.
0:28:51
It’s outdated. Let’s at least get a really good representation of your company in one single page. And yada, yada, yada. You have the rest of the conversation. Get them to agree. You come in, you do the single page website for free. You demonstrate your value. And then you have another conversation to follow up. Maybe they say, OK, that’s fantastic. We’re happy with our one page website. That’s all we want to do for right now. And we don’t want to do anything else. OK, that’s going to happen sometimes. However, you did build the first one.
0:29:24
However, you do have the opportunity, by the way, to say, well, you know, and say this up front and in the beginning, I am going to build you this one page website. But we do need somewhere to host it. And I would prefer to host it so that I can manage it for you and make sure that all of this is done properly. And that it’s on good hosting. And it’s fast. And you know, you give your host’s feel about why they should be doing a management plan with you. So even if you have built the website for free, this one page website, you can still get them on a paid management plan. They would not expect, and you should not offer to do the hosting and all of that stuff for free.
0:29:56
So you can get them on a recurring plan, done the work. And if some people out here, I’m going to have to do another video on this, selling website as a service plan. And they are doing $200 a month, $300 a month, $400 a month. I mean, if you’re doing a website management plan that doesn’t include, actually, you’re building the one page website for free. And the management plan is $65 a month. You’re not far off from what those other people are charging to do the entire website. They do that project after project after project after project. So, and I will do another video on website as a service versus traditional pricing model. But if you think about this, they’re now on a management plan with you.
0:30:35
You host the website. So even if they don’t want this, let’s build out the rest of the website concept right now, you still have your foot in the door. You’ve gained their trust. The minute they want to start to expand this, they’re coming back to you. I guarantee it, they’re coming back to you. So you are getting a foot in the door, you are building a relationship. And you are creating yet another opportunity for this person to do standard referrals to their own network. They’re going to talk to somebody who needs a website. They’re going to say, oh, you’ve got to try this guy. He built us this one page website.
0:31:06
It was amazing, great experiences. He knows what he’s doing. Go hire him. And there, boom, now you’re getting more leads from this person that you initially did a free site for. They’re on your management plan, so on and so forth. But it doesn’t have to be the actual service that you offer. So web design, it doesn’t have to be web design. You can offer to set up their GMB for free. You can contact them, say, I noticed that you don’t have your GMB setup. You haven’t been getting any reviews. I really think this is hurting you online in a local search. I would love to come in.
0:31:37
I mean, I do this stuff. I want to prove to you that I can bring value to your company. I want to do this for you for free. I’m going to set up your GMB. I’m going to consult with you and advise you on how you can really fill up this review profile section of your GMB so that you can establish a lot more credibility online. And you can leverage all the amazing testimonials that you could probably be getting to get more business for your company. So I’ll do this for free for you. And no strings attached, that’s it. And they’ll say, oh, OK, let’s go ahead and do that. And you come in, you set up the GMB, you do all of this for free.
0:32:13
And then it’s just, again, it gets your foot in the door. Now, people will say, well, Kevin, this takes time and it takes effort. And there is still risk. There’s risk that I do a GMB for somebody. I mean, how much time does that really take, right? But maybe nothing comes out of it. Absolutely. Maybe nothing comes out of it. But I want you to think about all the channels that I’ve talked about thus far. If you’re going to do content marketing, do you know how much work you have to do for free to make content marketing work for your company? If you’re going to do SEO, do you know how much work?
0:32:47
You’re going to have to do for free for your own company to make SEO work if you’re doing the Melcon Cookie strategy. That’s going to take time, too. That’s free work. Nobody’s paying you to go find those connections. Nobody’s paying you to follow up with those people, to have coffee, to make these relationships work and turn into something valuable, who’s paying you for that. Nobody’s paying you for any of that work. With this strategy, low scope free work, at least the free work you’re doing is literally getting your foot in the door. And remember, that’s pretty much the entire point of all of these things, is to get your foot in the door with as many opportunities as possible.
0:33:28
So all you’re doing with low scope free work is going direct to the source. You’re getting a client, a prospect, really, and you’re getting their attention by doing some work for them for free, versus doing some work for yourself for free, hoping to get people’s attention. Why don’t you just go get their attention offering to do the work for free? You can skip all the other free work that you would be doing. So I see it as fairly low risk. It also has the other benefit of building your portfolio, building your experience, giving you real world practice. So in a way, by the way, these are things that a lot of you pay for courses, pay for trainings, pay for the inner circle even, go to university for, okay, who’s paying you to go to, you pay to go to university, right?
0:34:13
You pay to do the online courses, and to do the training. This is just you doing some work for free, and you’re getting a lot of that same exact value, real world experience, nothing really beats real world experience. So the ability to get these opportunities and actually get your hands dirty and add real things to your portfolio, it’s absolutely fantastic. In my estimation, depending on where you’re at in your business, for a lot of you, it makes perfect sense to do this. And like I said in the beginning, you can do a mix of these things. You should absolutely be building local relationship networks while you’re doing some basic PPC, while you’re doing some low scope free work for people.
0:34:53
And if you’re doing those three things diligently for the next two to three months, then you don’t have any opportunities coming out of that, that you’ve got some major problems that we have to address somewhere in that mix, because there is no way that fails. Doing all three of those things over the next two to three months has what I would amount to, or what I would guess is a zero percent chance of failure. You are going to get opportunities doing that. And then it’s important that you actually deliver. It’s important that you do quality work, because the quality work and actually delivering is what keeps the referral funnel working. It’s what generates more work from the work that you’ve already gotten.
0:35:35
If you’re not that great at the execution side of things, the opportunities that you get will come and go, and nothing will come after them. And in fact, maybe you just start to die a slow death, because maybe you end up with a bad review here or there, right? Or just some unhappy clients, and you’re not really making people that happy, so it’s not really feeding your confidence, it’s not feeding your soul, you’re not having fun. Eventually, you’re going to die in that situation. So you want to make sure that you are up to snuff with your talents and your expertise and your skills. And that’s why obviously more practice, more experience, all of that stuff helps. Knowing who to bring in to fulfill different duties that you may not be so great at, that’s also important as well.
0:36:22
Just some extra nuggets there for you. But I think when people talk about free work to try to get more work, the big mistake they make is it’s not low scope. They do way too much for free. They don’t set up the relationship properly in the beginning. They do the work for people who don’t have any money and don’t have any hope of ever paying them, beyond this initial little mini project. Don’t make those mistakes, and it’s going to work out for you. Target the right people, find people with money, find people with opportunity, and limit the scope of the free work that you do. You just want to get your foot in the door, you just want to prove your skills and your expertise and your experience, and you just want to build trust.
0:37:03
That’s it. And you do that with the confidence that they’re going to like this, they’re going to want more from you, and they’re going to hire you for more stuff down the road. So those are your three strategies that I recommend employing. Again, that were me, I would focus on doing all three of those things. If you have any arguments against the free work, like I already said, you’re already doing a ton of work for free. You’re just doing it for yourself with the hope of getting people’s attention. You can just go straight to those people, get their attention by doing some free work for them, and then moving forwards.
0:37:40
The other two strategies are, you know, easily you can knock it out of the park with them. So free is not your thing, just do the other two strategies. If you’re okay doing low scope free work, throw that in the mix as well. If you don’t same with PPC, if you just, you don’t have two dimes to scrape together right now, then do one and three strategies one and three. Build a local network, the referral network, and do the low scope free work. That’s it. If you have any questions, let me know.
