Creating a freelance business or building your own company is an exciting way to make money. You can pursue projects you care about, make the most of your skills, and choose your hours. Plus, with your venture, you have complete control over which direction your business might grow in.
However, one of the biggest challenges for freelancers and business leaders will always be attracting clients. When you’re running your venture, it’s up to you to find opportunities to sell your skills or services to as many people as possible.
If you’re having trouble finding sales opportunities, then your issues might come down to a few critical things.
1. You don’t have a website
In today’s digital world, it seems almost impossible for any freelancer or business owner to jump into their new venture without a website. Just the fact that there are 5.6 billion Google searches every day should be enough to tell you how significant an online presence is.
When you’re launching your freelance career for the first time, it’s easy to assume that a social media page is enough to deliver the results you want. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case.
Your customers look to your website for a sign that you’re a legitimate, respectable, and professional business. If all you have is a half-hearted social media presence, you might be missing out on endless sales opportunities.
2. You don’t know who you’re selling to
If you want to successfully make a living as a self-employed person, then you need to know who’s going to be your audience. As tempting as it is to assume that anyone and everyone could benefit from your services, there are going to be some people that are more likely to buy.
For instance, if you’re a digital marketing consultant, your customer would probably be other businesses looking for ways to build their presence online. If you’re a bakery company delivering goods over the internet, your audience could be busy moms buying for their families, or people looking to lose weight if you have a low-calorie option.
Figure out who you want to sell to from day one and create a buyer persona. Your buyer persona is your ideal audience profile — complete with their age, demographic data, location, likes, dislikes, and even budget. You can use this as a compass when designing marketing campaigns.
3. Your customers can’t find you
We’ve already established that even freelancers need a website if they want to stand out online.
However, just setting up a one-pager with contact information won’t be enough for clients to get a favorable image of your business. You also need to ensure that your business appears in front of your audience at the right time.
You can write blog posts addressing the pain points of your potential clients. Because they’re more likely to search for solutions to their problems than the names of services that can help them solve it, you can greatly benefit from optimizing your content to match their queries.
That way, when a client has a problem, they’ll likely end up on your page — and depending on how helpful your content is, decide to hire you.
Search Engine Optimization improves your chances of ranking at the top of search results pages when your customers look for someone offering your products or services. The more content you have on keywords relevant to your clients, the higher you’ll rank in search results.
Mastering SEO means figuring out how to use everything from keywords to backlinks in your website content to drive more traffic. If you can make the most of SEO, you can pull an almost unlimited number of customers to your site.
4. Your customer service isn’t great
Experience is the most important differentiator for any company today. If your clients aren’t happy with the service you provide, they’re going to tell all of their friends not to trust you. This harms your reputation and makes it tougher to attract new opportunities in the future.
As important as it is to focus on things like SEO and marketing your business with social media ads, you also need to ensure that you’re delivering the service your audience expects. This means answering their questions promptly, offering live chat, and making sure you deliver on your promises on time.
Improving your customer service will boost your chances of finding new customers by convincing your existing clients to refer you to the people they know.
5. People don’t trust you
Your customers are suspicious people. There are too many stories of scams and criminals working online for clients not to be skeptical. Because of this, if you’re a new company, you might have a hard time convincing people to trust you — at least at first.
The good news is that you can work on improving your credibility. First, make sure you’re transparent about what you do and don’t promise your customers the world. Build real expectations about what you can deliver.
As you start to attract customers, ask them to leave reviews and testimonials on your site that can act as social proof for future leads. You can also boost your trust levels by working with influencers. These people can give your business a shout-out and increase its appeal during the early days.
Go forth and attract more clients
Attracting clients will always be a challenging part of building a successful business. Whether you’re a freelancer or a small business owner, you’ll need to improve your earning potential continually.
The good news is that if you can avoid the issues above, you’ll already be on the right track.
Build trust with your audience, deliver the service they want, and make sure that your clients can find you. At the same time, ensure that you know your audience, and they know everything there is to know about you with a great website. You’ll be en route to earning revenue in no time.
Ashley Wilson is a content creator, writing about business and tech. She has been known to reference movies in casual conversation and enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. You can get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.
Disclaimer: The content on this page is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or accounting advice. If you have specific questions about any of these topics, seek the counsel of a licensed professional.
