How to Get Clients Online (so you can stop relying solely on referrals)
Referrals are great.
Until they are not.
I hear this from so many different businesses, from the ones struggling for consistent revenue to those making multiple six figures.
If you’re trying to grow your revenue and scale your business OR if you’re trying to shift from corporate gigs to individual clients, referrals won’t get you there. You still need a marketing system that generates ongoing leads, and doesn’t leave it up to chance.
Referrals are obviously awesome. But it's super hard to plan ahead in business and be intentional when your income is entirely based on someone’s whim.
The good news: there are some simple things that you can do each week/month/quarter/year to continually get fresh eyes on you. There are so many ways that you can market, so many ways you can get more people learning about you.
But let’s skip the overwhelm of options, right?
Instead of worrying about all of the different marketing things that could be done, let’s talk about a simple marketing routine that is sustainable for you and makes sense for your goals.
Marketing May Not Always Be Fun, But It’s Necessary
People generally don't want to do marketing tasks in their business, because they're generally not zone-of-genius activities.
Even when you do marketing for a living (like me), that doesn't mean that I always love doing my own marketing tasks, because I’m a lot like you. I would love it if my days could just purely be spent on zone-of-genius activities.
But you know, we will always have to do a few things here and there that maybe are not the dreamiest things to do. But they are important to do because they enable us to do the work that we really love to do and to serve the clients that we really want to serve.
Marketing tasks are a means to an end.
And when you systematize them, pick the right approaches for you, and make it routine, it's actually easier to keep them up.
Let’s Talk About Mindset
Before we dive into the strategy, it's really important to acknowledge the role that mindset plays in marketing and being more visible.
Since the purpose of marketing is really just to be more visible to those who are most likely to hire you or to refer you to people who will hire you, this can feel super vulnerable and exposing and can bring up a lot of stuff.
But if we can view our marketing systems as something that we do to keep our businesses thriving, and enable us to do the work we love, it's easier to approach these tasks with a supportive mindset, rather than a de-motivating one.
This mindset is the initial groundwork that we have to talk about here.
The fact of the matter is that in modern online business, we sometimes have to do things that maybe we would rather not do.
And I don't mean like “rather not do” as in they cross our moral or ethical boundaries.
I mean things like social media.
But social media is a tool that you can really leverage to your advantage. It’s kind of part and parcel with modern business, especially if you don't have a kajillion referrals coming in all the time.
7 Strategies to Get Clients (that aren’t referrals!)
Strategy #1: Freebies and Email List
Get more people on your email list with helpful free content (i.e. freebies and opt-ins).
Those are things that you can put out there as a way to build your email list.
And then I highly recommend regularly emailing your list, even if it’s just once a month.
Send helpful info and be super, super, super consistent.
Strategy #2: Social Media
If you're like, “Oh, don't tell me that about social media, Erika! I just hate it and I want to give up”, here’s what I’ll say:
You do not have to live on social media to be successful, you do not have to have a gajillion followers, you do not have to be making Reels, you do not have to show every aspect of your life on Stories, you don't have to do that.
You do not have to be in all of the places on all of the platforms.
If you're like “I frickin love TikTok” then do TikTok. If you love LinkedIn, then do LinkedIn.
Spend time on any of the channels that feel aligned to you and where you have a strategy focused on sharing value and being authentic.
Target your ideal clients and make real connections.
Be social on social media!
If you are doing that it can work really, really well for you.
If showing up all the time annoys you, then batch your content. You can schedule the posts on your grid. And then you can just hop in for 15 minutes a day and engage with new people.
Strategy #3: Teach and Train Wherever Your Ideal Clients Are
Offer routine trainings or teachings in places where your ideal client hangs out.
So that could be either paid communities, free communities, any organizations that your ideal client might belong to.
Interviews on podcasts
Speak at digital or in person events
Instagram lives or Instagram takeovers
Guest blogging
You can also host your own free training in your channels. That’s a great way to build your list and reach.
Here’s an example:
I did a joint in-person training with my friend Jessica of the Social Localist. Before I moved from New York to Michigan, we lived in the same area. She worked with a lot of local businesses. And we knew my clientele had a lot of questions about using social media (her area of expertise), and her clients had a lot of questions about converting to sales (my area of expertise).
So we hosted an event together called “Get Social to Sell” and split profits 50/50. She put it out to her people and I put it out to my people. And so we grew our reach through each other.
Well, now it's easier than ever, because again, everything is virtual.
So all you would need is a Zoom Room! So if you know of somebody who serves the same type of clients, but you do different things, you could definitely create a joint training together.
Strategy #4: Networking (Both Online or In-Person)
Another way is networking.
Look for local meetups and various groups that make sense for you. Obviously, right now, most groups are not meeting in person. But find one for your geographic area or interest area that is hosting something online.
And if you can’t find anything, you could also potentially start your own! Again, right now, this can be easier than ever, because everything is virtual.
A friend of mine has been doing speed networking events where everyone pre-fills out a Google Sheet. And then everyone has two minutes to do their little elevator speech. I just did one with her a few weeks ago, and I then made personal connections with everyone afterwards.
Strategy #5: Coffee Chats + Collaborations
But sometimes networking events just feel like too much. When that happens, try a more 1-1 approach with coffee chats.
You can set them up on your call scheduler and create a booking link for 15-30 minute slots.
And then as you come across different people who you feel like you might want to connect with, you can just send them the link and say “I would love to get to know you better on a virtual coffee chat!”
So often, a great result from these types of conversations are collaborations!
That could be joint venture webinars or joint training or shared platforms. Or maybe it’s an affiliate pitch so you’re making money and growing your list. Also no pressure on making it paid; it can just be purely a list builder.
Strategy #6: SEO (and not just the Google kind)
Next step is SEO or Pinterest: the long-term game.
So this could mean doing search engine optimization on your blog posts, or creating new blog posts, or other forms of long-form content.
Platforms like YouTube and Pinterest (and obviously Google) help people find you organically through their search. (Pinterest is the third largest search engine!)
So basically what happens when somebody is searching for something in Google, it also pulls the text from YouTube videos and from Pinterest pins.
So if you utilize those, you might not get money coming in the very next day. But they are good long-term marketing strategies.
Strategy #7: Paid Ads
This is a viable strategy but not one to enter willy-nilly. I know folks who think this will solve all their problems but I promise, it won’t.
Ads can work and work really well -- but it’s best to outsource or learn from an expert. It’s a financial investment with a lot of trial and error involved.
Ads can be tempting because it feels like it's just going out to like total strangers and you’ll see a big increase in demand. And maybe you even feel a little less vulnerable because it's not your face and your voice speaking directly.
But it can be very costly. And you need to really keep an eye on it.=
Also: it works great when it works!
Now that we’ve got the strategies, here are some tips to help you be consistent with implementing them:
Be sure to consider strategies that are weekly vs seasonal
Of the strategies I just mentioned, some of those are things that you can do each week and some make more sense to space out.
So for instance, if you were doing JV webinars, and podcasts, interviews and stuff, if you were doing that every week, that is going to get really exhausting, and would probably be best if you did it seasonally.
The pace of social media moves very quickly. So that is one that you would probably be doing multiple days a week, checking in, updating content, because it moves so fast.
Now, if you're writing blog posts or something for SEO, maybe you do, you know, one a week or a few every month, because those are going to have a bit longer shelf life.
And maybe you do a podcast a month, a training seminar a month, etc.
Networking maybe it's a once a month thing that you go to those events.
Emailing your list, you could do that every week or every other week.
Choosing a Diverse Approach to Getting Clients
So again, it's really looking at the strategies and having a mix of them going in some kind of balance that works for you.
Because if you are doing every single thing, it can take a while to get that going, and you could feel really frustrated waiting for results to come through.
And conversely, if you are doing a lot of stuff that you have to be very present for every day, like tons of social media, that can also be exhausting, too.
So I suggest picking a mix of three things, no more than five, that you know that you can create a system/routine/habit around.
At the end of the day, what you really should be focusing on is being very consistent, quality over quantity. Because consistency in your efforts is going to give you consistency in your results.
One Thing at A Time
People tend to do this boom-and-bust cycle.
They will wait until they have a bunch of clients that are ending their contract period. And there's not a lot of new leads, and they're starting to freak out. And then they're like, “Oh my gosh, I have to go out and be all the places and try to get new leads and get new clients” and it feels very chaotic.
And it's a weird desperate energy that none of us love to have as we are marketing.
So instead of worrying about having to do that, it's better to just think about what you can consistently do, even when you don’t need new clients right away, and then do that.
Let’s say you want to try a new approach, like writing for different platforms.
So maybe that's Medium, or Mind Body Green or contributing to Forbes etc.
And maybe you don’t have a ton of time to just write content for other platforms all the time with the rest of your client work.
Okay, well, how about starting with maybe once a quarter or maybe once a month? Instead of having to go from 0-60mph and go from I'm-not-writing-anything-not-even-my-blog to an-article-a-week, just start smaller.
Or maybe writing a ton feels great to you.
Awesome!
But don't try to stack a bunch of other brand new marketing efforts on top of it either, right? So don’t start article writing and TikTok and all the podcast interviews and joint venture webinars and and and…
It’s not going to happen.
Try gradually making them part of your routine and getting really acclimated to one before adding another.
Just bring in one new thing at a time until it becomes part of your routine. And then once it's part of your routine, you can bring another one.
Juggling too many things isn’t going to work out.
Maybe you set it up for yourself that you either have one day a week where you are just doing a content day where you do it all and get it all scheduled.
Or maybe you disperse it in little time allotments. So maybe on Monday, you schedule your social posts, and on Tuesday you write an article or blog post. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you check in on your connections. And then once a month you hope to get on a podcast.
Again, it's more important to work on being consistent than to work on volume.
Track Your Efforts
It’s important to track what you are doing so you know what’s working, because when you know what’s working, when you know where those non-referral new clients are coming from, you can double down on what is working.
So for example, if you’re doing multiple efforts across webinars, podcasts, Instagram, and LinkedIn, see where those new leads are actually finding you.
Maybe they are really coming from LinkedIn but not Instagram and you can put Instagram down! And so then in the next quarter or half of the year, just spend more of your social media time strictly on LinkedIn.
Outsourcing
And the one last step further, as you grow your revenue and you're getting more clients, you can actually hand off tasks.
Maybe you have somebody who is looking up potential podcasts to pitch to and maybe even pitching on your behalf.
Or you have somebody who is doing community engagement on your Instagram and thus getting you new organic connections.
Or maybe you have somebody who is scheduling all your posts for you and they're mapping out your content plan for you.
Those are things that you can then outsource so that you get to be in your zone-of-genius, your high quality work you adore.
Make your marketing work for you, instead of it just being this thing that you have to slog through week after week.
Don’t wait on the next referral to come knocking on your internet door.
You can have a thriving business where you get leads that come from more than just referrals.
All you need to do is focus on a consistent, simple marketing strategy.
Track what you were doing, track what is working
Tweak it to suit your needs.
