Quote: (10-05-2018 07:15 AM)the.king Wrote:
I rely extensively on online advertising - SEO and PPC (google ads) where I dominate in my city. But winning new clients is very slow and exhaustive (I get A LOT of emails and calls from people who aren't serious prospects).
Any thoughts as to how I could win some good clients ? Honestly this forum is one of the only places in the world I would value advice.
Welcome to the world of small business, where you deal with the bogus ideas dreamed up by know-it-alls and the desperate.
My former company used to be number 1 on Google for web design. It generated about 3-5 inquiries a day. I wish I still had them as they were comedic gold.
They were generally junk, people looking for a website for as cheap as possible; trying to push quotes down because they had a better offer from India.
Web development is a really bad game as clients have no idea what they're buying and why they can't get the same results for much less. You can't tell how long something will take until it's done. Projects can stretch on for ever. Clients can come back with infinite changes. IN particular I remember one client whose £600 project stretched on for about two years.
One of the most bird-brained ideas that came in was a guy, who in all seriousness, had come up with a brilliant idea. He wanted us to make the next big search engine and go up against Google. His budget was £500.
So out of about 100 inquiries per month, we only took on about one client from them. Those tended to be fairly decent price-wise and one company offered £100,000 for their project.
As you go on you will no doubt refine your sieve. And if you're good, you can structure yourself so people have to fight for you. Don't make yourself look overly available or desperate, even if you are, as that is the road to being stuck there.
The vast majority of clients were from word-of-mouth. And that was a much better source.
Later I had another company that was on page one for SEM (search engine marketing). I don't think I had any clients I picked up from that.
In that incarnation I picked up all my clients from either word-of-mouth or from posting on business forums like
this. There are a lot of accountants who do the same, so see if there are business forums in your country.
It took me about 6 months to load up with enough clients to make a wage I was happy with. In the mean time do what you have to do to cut your expenses while you get enough clients. Live with your parents. Downsize. Work 80-100 hours per week. This is the kind of graft it often takes to set up your own game.