5 Tips to Find Clients For Your New Startup
Congrats! You’ve just decided to take a step into the service industry.
Now all you need to do is find paying customers. Finding clients for your brand new business venture can be intimidating. And, if this is something you’re struggling with, you’re not alone.
Not having a ton of experience can make finding clients one of your greatest challenges. But once you get your feet wet, finding new clients will be exciting, especially when you start seeing your bank account increase!
We’re going to share 5 practical tips that you can start doing today to connect with new clients.
1. Start With Your Community
Everyone has an online community that’s already established. You have friends on Facebook, Instagram, a list of contacts on your phone, and a ton of other online connections.
In 2018, Pew Research Center reported that 68% of adults in the U.S. use Facebook, and most of the check it daily.
The best part is that all of those people can be reached in a few minutes, right from your phone.
If you’ve just started a new company or side gig, let your friends know!
Don’t be shy about it; your friends want to support you. Even if they don’t want or need your offer, the more people who know about your new venture, the better!
Start by promoting your service to the people who already know you and have some level of trust built. You can post more than once because some people won’t catch it the first time, but don’t be annoying.
2. Go Where Your Clients Are Hanging out
This is something that a lot of new entrepreneurs struggle with. They want to hang out with like-minded people who are on a similar journey.
Writers like to hang out with other writers; designers spend time with other designers. While that’s a great learning environment, those people aren’t going to be your customers!
Spend some time thinking about who your ideal clients are.
If you’re starting out as a new graphic designer, find businesses that need your design skills.
There are communities for every type of person, so when you know who your potential customers are, start finding communities of them. There are thousands of Facebook groups, forums, YouTube channels, and in-person meetup groups.
Just be sure not to start conversations with your elevator pitch. This is a place to get to know people and develop relationships. The right time will come for you to offer your help.
3. Establish Yourself As The Expert
That may sound like a daunting task when you’re getting started.
The truth is, if you’re confident enough to start your new gig, you already have more knowledge than the average person.
The internet is full of people asking questions about everything!
You can start establishing yourself as a subject matter expert by answering people’s questions. Check out sites like Quora and Reddit. There are forums on every topic you can think of, and plenty of opportunities to share your knowledge.
When you answer people’s questions, they see you as an expert, which is one of the best ways to find potential customers.
Again, this isn’t the place to start with a sales pitch. Ideally, you want to connect with people and prove to them that you’re a knowledgeable and friendly person. That’s who people want to work with.
If you want to find some popular questions people are asking on the web, check out answerthepublic.com. This is an excellent resource if you want to do some studying to improve your knowledge.
Another great way to establish yourself as an expert is to share tips with people for free. You can share what you know on social media, or your website.
People spend their money with people they know, like, and trust. When you share valuable info for free, people start liking and trusting you more!
4. Offer Your Services
When you’ve started to let people know about what you’re doing and began building relationships, you need to make offers to people.
This is uncomfortable for people just getting started because it feels like you’re unqualified for the job. Some people have more experience, why would anyone hire you?
The truth is, customers aren’t going to put much effort into finding you, so you need to go out and find them. As long as you have some proof that you can get the job done, there’s a chance of getting the job.
But don’t expect opportunities to fall into your lap, or be served on a silver platter. You’ll need to do the work to find potential customers and make them a good offer.
Be sure not to undervalue your services either. Most people understand that they get what they pay for. If you’re charging half of the standard rate thinking it will get you more business, think again.
People want to invest in quality work. Offering a super low price says that you are inexperienced and offering low quality work. Low prices will also attract low-quality clients, which will be challenging to work with.
Remember that you have something valuable to offer, and you deserve to get paid for it!
5. Overdeliver
Overdelivering on your first projects is guaranteed to set you up for success in the future.
This is essential because returning customers and referrals are much easier than continually finding new clients.
You want to make an effort to wow your customers so much that they need to tell their friends and leave you a great review. Plus, overdelivering will increase your chances of becoming their go-to person.
It may seem tempting to overpromise during your startup phase, but that tends to backfire.
If you tell your new client that the job will be done in 3 days, but it takes 5, they’re going to be disappointed. If you tell them it will take 7 days, they’ll be happily surprised when you finish in 5 days.
Overpromising will only lead to added stress and hurt the quality of your work. Since you don’t have much experience yet, it’s best to err on the side of caution when you make promises to your customers.
Bonus: Don’t Give Up!
Building a brand new business requires a lot of work. If you get rejected more times than you can count, don’t worry.
Every successful person has dealt with their fair share of failures and rejections. The difference is that the successful people didn’t give up.
Do your due diligence to be the best, and keep going. Rest assured that when you do find the right people, it will make up for all of the times you were turned down.
You can use every no as an opportunity to learn and improve. When you do that, every no becomes a step closer to your yes.
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