Treasa Edmond: 0:00

Hey there, welcome back to the Boss Responses Podcast. I'm really excited about the episodes that we have lined up for this week and especially about my guest host. Lizzie Davey is a Brighton-based freelancer who works in marketing, saas and e-commerce. She's worked with some of the best names in the business and she's very good at what she does. I'm excited to learn from her this week, and I hope you are too.

Treasa Edmond: 0:26

Today's question deals with reaching out to potential clients and actually getting responses back from them. I hope our responses are helpful to you as you reach out to your future clients. Let's go ahead and get into it. If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, teresa 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. Lizzie, thank you for being with us this week. I'm really glad you're here. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me, all right. So what is the question for day one?

Lizzie Davey: 1:35

So, today we have a question from Jenny from San Diego, California, and she says I'm trying to niche down and I'm having some trouble. I want to specialize in case studies and more audience-centered content for B2B environmental tech. I have a decent portfolio started, but I'm having trouble getting a response back from potential clients. I've sent out several proposals and followed up, but it seems like my emails are getting lost in the shuffle. What strategies can I use to effectively market myself and get noticed by the right clients in this niche?

Treasa Edmond: 2:08

This is an interesting question and it's also a really complicated one, because without knowing specifically about the niche and what seems to work, it's hard to give a specific strategy. I can talk about general strategies. The first one I would recommend is make sure that those people are actually hiring individual freelance writers. I know there are a lot of tech niches especially that work almost exclusively with agencies. So your best way to get in might be and I hardly ever say this because I'm not a huge agency fan, but it might be to reach out to agencies that do work with those companies and see if you can get a couple of clips into your portfolio from them, and then that might give you an in. It might also give you a way to work directly with clients. If it's more complicated projects and they mentioned case studies and audience centered content I would recommend starting there. I would also recommend trying to form relationships with people who are in marketing in that niche.

Treasa Edmond: 3:09

I'm big on relational marketing. I struggle with LOIs. They make my soul want to shrivel up and die, but I do like reaching out to people and I like forming relationships and supporting them and doing what I can do and doing what I can do. Sometimes those don't lead to a direct client relationship, but they almost always lead to some kind of referral or at least an extended version of a connection that will get you where you want to go. They take more time, they take more effort, but if you're already trying to do it and it's not working, then keep up with that and be diligent about it.

Treasa Edmond: 3:44

I have someone from my community who's doing a LinkedIn experiment right now, and one of the things she's doing is she's connecting with people every single day, she's interacting with their posts, and she's doing all of that so that her name is familiar before she ever DMs them. And then she's not DMing them about working with them. She DMs them to ask them a question or to get to know them in some way, or even just to set up a call and learn more about what they do, and from that she has a steady stream of work coming in, and she's in tech. Hers isn't B2B environmental. She is B2B tech, though. So I think those are really great ways to do. What would you recommend? I know promotion is your thing, lizzie.

Lizzie Davey: 4:26

Yeah, I completely agree about building out your network thing. Lizzie, yeah, I completely agree about building out your network and kind of I call it warm pitching, where you warm up prospects before you actually reach out. So I know that Jenny says that she's been sending proposals already and I, for me, proposals are quite a hefty chunk of work if I'm not guaranteed to land that client. So for me, while I'm doing kind of that background warm network building stuff, like you said, someone in your community is doing with the commenting and then reaching out, I would also recommend qualifying potential clients before spending time creating those proposals. So it's like you said do they work with freelancers? Do they have a need for those services and other things?

Lizzie Davey: 5:08

I'm not quite sure what it would look like in the B2B environmental tech kind of industry, but there are usually certain things that you can look out for that tell you if somebody works with a freelancer or might need services like you offer, will reach out, and usually it's not a long pitch like it's, because I, like you, like LOIs feel really stuffy and a bit corporate for me. So usually it's just like a quick email or a quick DM on LinkedIn. That will just be like do you work for freelancers? Are you looking for any more help? Just to get that conversation started, because I think it's less about getting someone to commit to working with you right here, right, because very few people will if they don't know who you are and they don't have any kind of proof or trust in you. But you want to open up that conversation, so you basically just want to aim for a reply at that point. That's what I would do if I was in Jenny's situation.

Treasa Edmond: 6:04

And that kind of a strategy. I think one of the major benefits is they see your name and then they become familiar with your name and they're probably going to go check out your profile and then the next time you comment on one of their posts they're going to say oh, this is a familiar name, so they're going to interact with you and those interactions build up and eventually they form some kind of a relationship, even if it's a very casual relationship. I think that's incredibly powerful. Now I want to dive into something, if you don't mind, lizzie. I seldom do that on these daily ones, but I really think this is important. I'm blessed in that most of my clients are inbound, so I qualify them as they come in and I have a qualifying questionnaire that they can fill out and it asks what the project is, what the deadlines are, what their budget is, all of that stuff. When you're qualifying, pre-qualifying a client before you ever even have any contact with them, what's the process you use for that?

Lizzie Davey: 7:01

So there's several different things I look out for. The main one is do they work with other freelancers? And I can tell that if I go onto their blog and they've got bylines from other freelancers. If they post like a lot of content, so if they're regularly posting new blog posts, if they share a lot on social media, it usually means that they've got some kind of marketing budget there.

Lizzie Davey: 7:20

And I know that at the start of my career I would often pitch people that didn't have blogs because it was like, okay, these people don't have a blog, they need a blog, so I'm going to pitch them my services. But usually there's a reason they don't have a blog and often it's because they don't see the value in it. So I spent a lot of my time trying to convince people why they needed a blog before I could then convince them to work with me. So I added a step to the process. So now I only pitch brands that have a really healthy blog or a really healthy kind of social media output.

Lizzie Davey: 7:56

I also look for on LinkedIn I do a company search just to see how many people are working that, particularly in the content department, and whether they have any in-house writers or whether it's just a content manager who's overseeing everything. Those are the three main things that I do. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head, but it's mostly looking at do these people need my services and do these people already work with freelancers? Because I'm really not about to educate a brand on why they should work with freelancers. I don't have the time for that.

Treasa Edmond: 8:31

I used to be so into that and then I just realized it's not an effective use of my time, and that's a good point as well. When you are qualifying your clients, not everyone is meant to be your client. Some people don't value content, some people don't value freelancers. Just don't work with those people. It's never good for your sanity in the end. All right, jenny, I hope that was all helpful information, and if you want to know more about promoting yourself and reaching out to clients, make sure you come back for our episode on Friday, because we're going to dive deep into promotion and I think that would be very helpful here as well. All right, thank you, lizzie. Thank you.