Treasa Edmond: 0:00

Welcome back to the Boss Responses Podcast. You know finding clients isn't always easy, and when there's a downturn in the economy it can be even more difficult. Add to that the fact that if you find potential clients, you still have to convince them that you're a good fit for their project, and things can get pretty nerve-wracking. If this is a topic that gives you nightmares, you want to listen to this episode. My guest co-host of the week, Jessica Walrack, and I talk about how you can attract clients to you, ways that you can reach out that actually work, and the importance of making sure you're marketing to the right audience. Let's go. If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place.

Treasa Edmond: 0:47

I'm your host, Treasa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asked a question I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embrace their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses. We are back for day three with Jessica Walrick. Jessica, what's the question for today?

Jessica Walrack: 1:34

Okay, so this person is having trouble finding new clients. Last year they lost most of their repeat clients due to budget cuts on their end, which I think happened to a lot of people.

Jessica Walrack: 1:44

Yeah, most of their repeat clients due to budget cuts on their end, which I think happened to a lot of people. They've been freelancing for about five years and this is the first time they've really had to work on reaching out to prospective clients, and it's not going well. They don't like doing LOIs and the response rates are horrible. They know a lot of other freelancers are in the same boat, but also see people who are having record months and more clients than they can handle. It's a bit depressing, but they know they don't want to go back to working for someone else. So the question is how are people finding clients good clients, and is there a new process they should try.

Treasa Edmond: 2:18

I don't know about a new process, but there are definitely some things you can try. I find my best clients historically from referrals People who come to me because someone else told them about me, or people who say, hey, I have someone else who needs this service. Are you accepting new clients right now? Almost all of those people are easier to work with across the board because they come into the conversation and the relationship with a level of trust that I haven't had to build. They see someone else's success or they've come to me because they want to work with me, and I think that makes it a lot easier. That doesn't help necessarily so much with finding new clients, except for the fact that you can reach out. So reach out to previous clients, and this is something that I've seen a lot in the last couple of months. People are reaching back out to those clients they lost due to the budget cuts and they're ready to give work again. So start by reaching out to your existing clients, the people that you've already worked with, to see if they have work and, if not, ask them if they're willing to refer you to someone else.

Treasa Edmond: 3:27

People who were laid off in the marketing world, who have moved to other companies. Find them on LinkedIn. Find people that you've worked with before and say hey, I really enjoyed working with you when you were at such and such. Are you working with freelancers at your new position? If so, I have availability in my schedule. I think the biggest thing that I would recommend is reach out with an honest desire to help people and do work, but don't sound desperate. It's a natural human inclination that people don't want to work with desperate people, and if you say I have space in my schedule instead of I really need work right now we're going to be more inclined to accept you, and that's a weird thing, but it is a thing that I think we need to pay attention to.

Treasa Edmond: 4:07

The LOI will do absolutely anything I can to not have to send them out. I'd like to do relational marketing and I form relationships with people that I would like to work with Honest, sincere relationships. I don't connect with someone on LinkedIn and immediately send them a thing saying, hey, do you work with freelancers? I do this thing Because that's the same as an LOI. It's just on LinkedIn I do, though. I follow them, I will comment on their things and then I do the connection request and then I'll have a brief conversation in there and if it feels like we're really hitting it off not, that sounds weird, isn't it to say hitting it off, that's such a dating thing but if it feels like we have a potential for a positive working relationship, then I will reach out to them and say, hey, I don't know if you know, but I actually do writing in your space. If there's ever any way I can serve you or your company and help you meet these goals. These are some of the things I can do, and I give very specific examples of what I can do and how I can help them. And then if they say, hey, we're not doing that right now, I say that's fine and I continue the conversation. I don't like divorce them because they don't have anything for me. What I find is I get work from about 25% of those, but another 25 to 50% send me other clients because they're like, oh, hey, yeah, no, I know someone who does that. Let me put you in contact with them.

Treasa Edmond: 5:31

Relational marketing, I think, is just kind of where it's at. You're forming a very direct relationship with your audience. When I did the content manager thing, and even if I do it for clients now, you get hundreds of emails a week and you just don't read them unless they're from someone. So that's something that I know. Some people have really good luck with LOIs and they've tailored them and they're personal. They're still very relational. So my thing is reach out to everyone. Reach out to your previous clients, reach out to the people that you want to be clients, reach out to other writers who specialize in what you specialize in and just say, hey, I'm looking for new projects. Right now I have availability in my schedule If you have any projects that come your way that aren't a perfect fit. I'd love if you'd send them to me and you can do that. So there are lots of formal ways to do that and informal, but I just reach out and make the ask if that's what I need and it works for me. I don't know what works best for you, Jessica.

Jessica Walrack: 6:33

Yeah, I'm a big believer in relational marketing too. I've never sent out cold emails really. I know a lot of people that have. I did used to do outbound, but it wasn't cold and I'll talk a little bit more about that on day five. Couple months I've really been seeing an uptick in the market personally, and then I run the job board too. So every week I'm out there, I'm looking for opportunities, I'm keeping a finger on the pulse of how many there are and who's asking and all of that, and it's definitely been increasing, which has been exciting and encouraging for me to see.

Jessica Walrack: 7:13

I love to see that because it was rough in especially 2022. I had some clients drop out too because of budget cuts. They just cut the whole freelancing team and that was frustrating and I know a lot of people are. Some are getting clients and but a lot of them are struggling still. And I think also a lot of people have come into freelancing a lot more people just who have been laid off maybe and they're going to freelance in the meantime or maybe they want to do that to diversify their risk. So I feel like the freelancer pool has gotten heavier. A lot of them are sending LOIs, which is making the conversion rates go down on that kind of marketing.

Jessica Walrack: 7:52

For me, what I've seen work the best is really having a specific area of expertise, since there are so many options. I've found that I've gotten feedback from clients saying that when they're looking for a B2B SAS case study writer and they get 100 applications for the job, they're going to go with the specialist over the generalist in most cases, the generalist in most cases. And so I think that kind of figuring out how you want to maybe present yourself as an expert in something and then aligning your online presence to back you up your website and your LinkedIn profile LinkedIn is just huge right now. There's so much opportunity there. I'm a big believer in LinkedIn and then posting helps a lot too, just to raise awareness around who you are and what you do. It can feel like there's a lot of competition out there, but it really helps just to put it out there and get into people's awareness so they know who you are and they know what you offer.

Jessica Walrack: 8:52

And then I think, once you have your presence set up and everything's aligned, then you can go and you can message someone and say, hey, if they're your ideal client, hey, just want to connect with you. I'm a freelance writer, like. I don't even think that there needs to be a pitch. If you're connecting with the right people, it's going to be relevant to them. They're going to see you and be like oh, are you free for work? Can you, are you interested for work? Can you, are you interested? Or I'll keep you in mind for the future, or something like that. It's planting the seed and then, once you're connected, you'll see them out in the feed, they'll see your stuff, and then that relationship kind of can grow organically. I think everybody feels the same about the pitch. Slaps on LinkedIn, like you don't want.

Treasa Edmond: 9:34

Those are annoying.

Jessica Walrack: 9:35

Hey, I offer this and just like the pushy hey, did you get my last email? Like those things are so annoying. I never want to be that person, so I wouldn't recommend doing that.

Treasa Edmond: 9:45

But and what I always recommend is, when you are forming a relationship with someone on LinkedIn, be sincere. Don't just connect with someone because you want to work with them. I mean, even if that's your end goal connect with them because you want to work with them. I mean even if that's your end goal, connect with them because you want to connect with them and be sincere in your responses and how you interact with them. That's so important and I can tell it makes sense.

Jessica Walrack: 10:06

You want to connect with people in your industry. You want to know what they're thinking about, what they're working on, their insights, and they want to learn those things from you as well.

Treasa Edmond: 10:16

Yeah, and when people get the opportunity to share about themselves and what they're excited about, then they get excited about you, because you ask the question, asking questions I seldom have to ever tell someone this is what I do. I just ask questions and then they're like so what do you do? Because it's reciprocal.

Treasa Edmond: 10:32

One of the things you'd mentioned is your LinkedIn presence and how important that is and it's so important right now Putting on my strategist hat, so walking away from being podcaster for a second I see a couple of things on LinkedIn that I think, people, if you make a switch, it makes a huge difference in getting clients. One is make sure your messaging is very consistent and very tailored to your client. Your about section should tell how you solve problems for your clients. It shouldn't just say I write blog posts for B2B tech. It should say I write blog posts that do this and this for B2B tech. You need to solve the problem. That's so important.

Treasa Edmond: 11:07

Then, when you're doing posts and this is something I see a lot of freelancers doing and I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm just going to keep mentioning it they write about being a freelancer. I'm sorry, your clients don't care what it's like for you to be a freelancer. They don't care that you spend five hours writing a post. They don't care that you hire an editor. What they care about is the problem you're solving for them. So when you're writing all of those things about what it's like to be a freelancer, the only people you're talking to is other freelancers, and unless you are doing something with other freelancers, like Jessica and I, then that doesn't matter. It really doesn't, and I know that's a hard pill to swallow. What you should be doing is talking about the problems you're solving for your clients. So the blog post I wrote for such and such last week, if you can talk about your clients, has already received blah, blah, blah. Or I worked with a client last week to solve a problem they're having and connecting with their audience.

Treasa Edmond: 12:00

So, whatever it is, talk about the problems you're solving for your clients. Your posts can almost be mini case studies where you're talking about the problems that you're solving. But talk to your audience, not to other freelancers, and realize that product-led marketing is when you're telling your perspective audience all about your product. Your audience doesn't really care all about your product. They only care about the product as far as it relates to them and solves their problems.

Treasa Edmond: 12:25

So if you focus on audience-led marketing instead and speak directly to your audience and solve their problems, it's just way more effective and that works for freelancers too it's not just for big corporations way more effective and that works for freelancers too. It's not just for big corporations, and that's something that you know. Like Jessica said, really make sure your website's dialed in, make sure your messaging is on there, make sure you have the right keywords. If you're specializing in a certain thing, you need to mention it more than once and do the same thing on LinkedIn and talk about it and don't talk about the difficulties of the process or even the process. Talk about the end results and how you're helping your clients.

Jessica Walrack: 13:00

Yeah, I think of the LinkedIn page as like a landing page, a sales page, where every piece should be building on the last speaking to a specific person, providing proofs, testimonials, your results. All of that should be aligned, because when the people get a message from you, they're going to click over to your page and they're going to say is this the person I want to hire? So that's such a big chance for you to convince them.

Treasa Edmond: 13:26

I'm glad you mentioned testimonials, and people might be saying what does testimonials have to do with getting new clients? A lot Proof, right? Yeah, if you are not asking your clients for testimonials, you should be. It is an automated part of my process. The final email that I send any client. It's on there. I've really enjoyed working with you on this project. I'd love it if you enjoyed it as well, if you'd be willing to give me a testimonial or a review and then I tell them exactly how to do it. And if they're willing to do a testimonial, I even include a template. I can say here's an example of one of my testimonials from the past. You, of one of my testimonials from the past. You could do something exactly like this and I go on faith that they're going to read that and be like yeah, I can spend two seconds customizing that and send it back. Do the testimonials, put them on your website, post them on your LinkedIn post. Humble bragging is not a thing. It's not bragging. It's being confident and showing how you're helping your clients.

Jessica Walrack: 14:25

Just do the thing, because your clients won't know how you're helping people unless you have all of those things on there. Yeah, and it's one thing for you to say it, so you're blue in the face, but when other people are reinforcing it over and over, it's going to be convincing. And I know I've hired freelance writers myself too and it's a risk. You're taking a risk and you're putting out money to this person on the internet that you've never met. So it's like when you're going to look at somebody, you want to be convinced that you can trust them as much as possible to ensure that you're going to get a return on your investment side. They have doubts and they have fears, and so how are you addressing those? How are you ensuring that those people feel confident, like beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you're going to deliver? That's the goal of your website and your LinkedIn page.

Treasa Edmond: 15:14

Yeah. So tighten up your messaging, tighten up your marketing, reach out to old clients, reach out to people that you can ask for referrals, reach out to other freelancers. Just do a lot of reaching out, and once you have your pipeline of clients coming in, then you can focus your outreach or your marketing so that you're not doing as much outreach. But until then, you have to do the work and you can't stop. And if LOIs are breaking your soul like they do mine, then find another way. Find another way Because they're not for everyone.

Treasa Edmond: 15:48

This is the whole thing that Boss Responses is about. There are a million ways to run your business. Some of them are going to work for you, some of them are not, and it's about finding the business that works for you and is most fulfilling to you. So find the outreach process that works best for you so that you can bring in the clients that you would love to work with. Love that, all right. That's the last of day three with Jessica. Tomorrow. We are talking about clients that drive you crazy. Oh, this one looks like a good one.

Treasa Edmond: 16:18

Yeah, it's an exciting one. All right, so come back tomorrow for day four with Jessica.