OK, I've been inspired to get off my lazy rear by posts from the likes of Latoya and JHMattern and hunt some new clients. Whilst using the DP forums have proved lucrative in the short term the majority of the buyers I have spoken with so far do not pay the sort of fees that I am looking for in the longer term (though a few have grown to be good clients who set store by value not cost). To that end I am cold contacting clients. Whilst I have been doing that to a degree via linkedin I have decided to extend my cold contacting to target a few specific business verticals. What I am currently looking at is the various means of contacting the companies and how best to approach my marketing efforts. As with all marketing it is going to have to be a case of testing, constant testing. But rather than just rely on best guesses to take me to the starting point let me ask those that already do cold contacting as a marketing strategy... how do you do yours? Expecting something for nothing isn't really fair so let me share my initial thoughts on how I will fill my marketing time for the rest of the week. Social Networking Sites - Vastly overlooked by many writers in my opinion, target business owners and marketing managers within set niches. Most are able to be found via simple search algorithms. Cold Calling - Scares many people and so is often shyed away from. But my background in B2B sales and recruitment has me confident in my skills, though I do admit some trepidation as to coming up with a suitable pitch (any suggestions?) Email Shot - I do run a recruitment business (freelance writing is a part time thing at the moment) and so have a database of companies to contact. Whilst they may well be the wrong contact they could well know the right person in the company to talk to. So thats my marketing plan for the week. Initial jobs for this evening include coming up with a suitable pitch for my cold calling and making a 'hit list' of clients to target for my cold calling. So there you have it, my cold contacting thoughts in a nutshell. Care to share yours?
Not quite gone according to plan so far... I upgraded my hostgator account about 2 weeks ago and the process has since called me nothing but nightmares, email issues galore and now for some reason all my websites reverted to sites that are two months old - thankfully I back up (learnt that lesson before) but it has taken me the last 4 hours to fix. Odd feeling a sense of achievement when in essence I am at the same point now as I thought i was when I got up this morning. Have writing to do now so marketing postponed until tomorrow... gives me more time to work on my script anyway and for you lot to reply with cold contacting tips, come on people, help a man out
don't we all dread cold calling? lol I basically do cold emailing to local businesses. What I do is visit their website a number of times and see what I can do for their site and company in general. If I see anything specific that I can deliver to them, then I send a very specific email. Otherwise, I just send a general query with my qualifications, resume and sample works. Which types of businesses do I target? Those which I think are big enough to have a budget to hire a freelance writer, but small enough to need to outsource their writing requirements. I hope that helps.
I have never tried cold emailing before but possibly this is what I will be doing if I am running out of clients.
Few hours done today - mixed response but certainly encouraging. Sales patter needs a bit of work I think but towards the end I hit my stride. Have a few call backs lined up for next week to discuss how I can help them. Cold emailing was something I was planning at looking at as well, I just decided to use my background in B2B sales to help get a feel for the market place and what it was looking for before putting my name out there more en masse. Suspect this is something that is going to pay off a month or two down the line though, so sticking with smaller paiying jobs whilst I progress
its a good way of building a client base.. but you need a very good target email list else you will end up wasting time
Good news - cold calling landed me a blogging assignment with a company that pays me better than any other such assignments I have had - not as well paying as I hoped but far more than I tend to see on online pitching sites, even at the top end.
Here is a free tip for you ($99 worth) - join dnforum.com, post there frequently and advertise your services, you'll get plenty of orders there.