If you're looking for new clients,
you're in the right place. Today I'm gonna share my simple three
step strategy for attracting clients, and I really hope it helps you. So the first step in this strategy
is to build out your framework. There are a few sort of
non-negotiables that I think. Any freelance business, whether you're a
social media manager or graphic designer, a copywriter, or really anything else that
I think all those folks can benefit from. Now, I don't think that you need to
spend $10,000 on a fancy logo or get a ton of business cards printed or
even have a professional build your website, but that is one of the tools
that I do think most freelancers should. I think having a website makes
you so much more attractive to ideal clients, and here's why. Well, I actually just did a video
with a website strategy expert who totally backed me up on this, in
that having a website just helps you appear more legitimate, more
trustworthy to your perspective clients. I personally have hired a lot
of freelancers over the years, from copywriters to virtual
assistants to graphic designers and social media managers. I'm gonna be honest, I don't think I've
ever hired any one of those professions who didn't have a website to just
showcase that they are serious about this. That this isn't just kind of a
passing thing that they're doing, that they are are professionals. So having a website can be a
very, very important thing before you go out and start pitching
to clients or applying for gigs. It also helps because it enables. Of clients to sort of get a menu
of your services and have an idea of what you're all about before
they hop on a call with you. And this can be a major time saver. I know I personally do not wanna get
on a discovery call and just rattle off a bunch of things that I could
have written down and that could have. Qualified the customer
before they came to me. So build out a website. I really like Squarespace. It is so easy to launch a website. They're not sponsoring. I wish they were sponsoring. It's seriously so easy. You can build a website and Squarespace
in, you know, a couple of hours. I've built all my own websites
and sure there's a lot that I can improve on those websites. But the most important things, in my
opinion are to have an about section, To have a services section and to have
a contact section on your website. It doesn't need to be
super fancy, just make. That it exists. And going along with that, one of
the other non-negotiables for me is having a professional email address. Now, in an ideal world, I would also
recommend having this be branded. So for example, if your website is social
media manager.com, make your email address latasha social media manager.com or. Hello, at latasha james.com. contact@latashajames.com. Something like that. Again, this is really easy to
do with Squarespace or any of your web hosts, more or less. GoDaddy allows you to do that. Uh, pretty much any of the website
builders and website platforms will allow you to do that. But if you are pinching pennies, which I
totally understand, at least having you know, latashaJames@blahblahblah.com, or
social media manager@blahblahblah.com looks a lot more professional
than like Lil Latasha 8 9 2 5. You know, it just appears very spammy
and I know that those are emails I always ignore when somebody cold pitches me. So make sure that you have a
professional website and a profess. Email to start with. Now, a couple other kind of framework
type, nice to have things would also be a client management system. I really like the tool HoneyBook,
which allows you to create things like intake forms, scheduling forms,
questionnaires, invoices, contracts. These are all gonna be really
helpful for you down the road when you actually start to sign clients. But again, if you're on a super budget, I
don't even think you need to worry about. At this exact point, if you're just
on a budget and you're looking for clients, you can always do honey book
or whatever client management system you want to use later down the road. But if you do wanna try Honey
book, I'll leave my $1 link in the show notes for you. You can try it out for just $1 a month. Really know losing there. I think you all will really like it. Okay, now let's get into the
actual client acquisition part. First, let's talk about outreach. And I'm gonna talk about outreach first. A lot of people think. If I want to be a really successful
social media manager or graphic designer, I should be like all the social
media managers and graphic designers that I see on YouTube and Instagram. Right. And they're creating a lot of
content and they say content is really helpful for them, so I
should create content first, right? Kind of. I think that sure, if you have all
the time in the world to, you know, create content, While you're doing
outreach, then definitely do that. But the reality is most of
us are not in that position. Most of us have to make some choices here. So my recommendation is to get yourself
some clients to start with, and then once you're in a good place where you have,
you know, some clients coming in, some money coming in the door, then you can
kind of shift or focus to the inbound marketing, which we'll talk about in a. So how do you get clients to begin with? Well, I'll tell you how I got my
first clients when I was starting out. I sent a lot of cold emails. I also did a podcast interview recently
with a friend of mine and agency owner who mentioned that he built his entire
agency through cold emails, and I was right there with him watching him. We started our businesses
in similar times. Yes, that was something
that I was doing as well. I was sending out cold emails
to brands that I wanted to work with, not in a spammy way, just
simply starting with introductions. Hey, I'm Latasha. I'm a social media manager. I love your Instagram account. I have a few ideas that would
help you convert more of those followers into sales. Do you have 15 minutes for a coffee chat? I'd love to chat with you. Just really simple. Cold emails like that, and yeah, of
course not all of those people converted. In fact, very few of
those people converted. But you just need one or two
yeses to book yourself out. At least I did. So I would make a point to do one
hour of outreach every single day. When I first started, sometimes it was
even more like before I had any clients, it was, I would spend half the day doing
outreach, reaching out to businesses in my area or just online in my niche. Uh, I would also do other
outreach activities, like hosting webinars, just free educational
opportunities for my network. One of my top converting
webinars back then was all about. Video content, why you need
to be doing video content if you wanna be on social media. And this was way before, you know,
Instagram reels and TikTok and even YouTube was quite as big as it was today. So I was really demonstrating my expertise
and explaining this kind of new concept to people and just teaching For 30 minutes. I did them lunch and learn style, and I
got so many clients who said, Wow, you really know what you're talking about. I would love to hire you just
from doing those free events. So do outreach activities every single. Put a limit on it, whether it's
an hour, whether it's two hours, whether it's an entire day. Again, if you're starting from scratch,
you should probably be spending your entire day doing outreach right now. Another thing that really helped
build my business was using freelance boards, freelance job boards, freelance
job sites, job boards in general. So Upwork was one that I really liked. I just like the platform. I found the. High quality gigs on that site
when compared with some others. But that's not to say
the others don't work. I say try everything. Try a different freelancing board
every day of the week if you have to until you get your first bite. But again, put, you know,
30 minutes of that hour that you're designating to outreach. Browsing job boards, browsing up, work
browsing five or browsing freelancer.com, browsing LinkedIn and sorting by job
types, remote or contract or part-time. These were all things that I tried. I was just very hungry and
I reached out to everybody. Now, in addition to just not
being spammy and sending forth a nice proposal like I already. Kind of recommended some other things
that can help take these proposals to the next level is by including a video. I really like the tool video to
just record a simple browser video on my webcam saying, Hey, Soandso,
you know, love your Instagram. I visited your store the
other day with my friends. It's so cool. Have you thought about running Google
ads to get more people in the store? You know, um, just little
things like that can. Help take you from just like another
person in a sea of cold emails to somebody who is a real human who really cares about
my business and who I really want to meet. Another thing I'm gonna say, if
you're sending out cold emails, please stop insulting people. Like I get so many cold emails into my
inbox every day, and you would be shocked by how many of them are just down. Rude and insulting. Hey, your YouTube videos are good,
but your thumbnails need work. Or, um, this landing page is
not good and I can fix it. Like, Okay, congrats, whatever. You got my attention. But you're also a jerk and not somebody I
would ever want to pay money to work with. So there's a way to showcase your. Skills and your knowledge without
cutting other people down. So a better way to do that
might be, Hey, I was in your store the other night, loved it. I went to go tag something that I bought
on Instagram and I noticed that you hadn't posted in a couple of weeks. One of the best things that you
can do for Instagram growth. is get on a consistent posting schedule. I would love to chat with you
about some content ideas, if that might be an area that you are
struggling with right now, right? You see how that is helpful? You see how that is complimentary
and it is not saying, Hey, you suck for not posting every day. Okay? And the last thing I'm gonna say about
outreach, this is something that I don't even remember who told me this. It must have been like a friend or a
mentor or somebody I watched on YouTube. I don't really know. I remember them saying to me, Get 10 no's. Just start by getting 10 no's. That's my challenge to you if
you are tuning into this episode. And you are thinking,
I don't have clients. I need more clients. I want you to make it your goal
over this next week to get 10 no's. And I know this sounds weird, I know
it sounds counterintuitive, but. By getting 10 no's, there is a
really good chance you're gonna get at least one or at least one maybe. And even if you don't, you're
gonna feel really tough. Your skin is going to be really thick
after that, and those future no's are just gonna brush right off of you. Rejection for me is
not even scary anymore. And it used to be, when I first started,
I used to take it incredibly personal. I used to feel like a complete
loser when I would get a no. And now I just. So many reasons why you will get no's. It can be timing, it can be budget, it
can be somebody had a bad day that day. It could be a million things in the world. So you just can't take it personally. So get 10 no's. Again, chances are just by going
out and trying to get those no's, you're gonna stumble upon. Yes. And also if you get like. Absolutely no responses, or you get really
negative feedback, well then that's gonna be feedback to help you improve your pitch
In the future, that's gonna tell you, Hmm, maybe I need to take a different approach. Maybe I need to reach out to
a different type of company. Maybe I need to send more, you
know, portfolio of material. Something needs to be different. So it's gonna give you
feedback if nothing else. All right now. Comes the inbound stuff. Inbound is how I get the majority of my
leads nowadays, and actually how I got some of my very first clients as well. Posting YouTube videos or
whatever it is that you want. There are so many different
platforms out there nowadays. I say, lean into your strengths. If you like to talk, if you like
to, you know, show up on camera and like you can ramble for hours,
Start a podcast or YouTube channel. If you are like really into trends
and really into being entertaining. Maybe you're like, you were like the
class clown, or you're the person in your friend group who was always telling jokes
and keeping up with the pop culture. Go on TikTok, if you like to write,
go on Twitter or start a newsletter. Like there are so many different
types of content, so I can't even begin to get into all of the different
things that you could choose. I do have an episode all about how to
build a content strategy that's gonna be really helpful for you if you're kind
of just in the beginning stages of this. So I'll link that for you,
but start content for. That was YouTube. Starting a long form content series
has really helped me rank and search so that when people type in social
media manager, I pop up not just on YouTube, but also on Google. When companies are searching for that,
when people who are looking to learn about social media management search that. I pop up. So do the same thing on whatever platform
you choose, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. I don't care what it is, but my
recommendation is to start some type of e-series, if you can, some
type of recurring thing that people can know you for, whether that's
a podcast or a YouTube series. Or whether it is more of a just
style of content that you do, you wanna sort of start to carve
out this space for yourself. Carve out this niche for yourself where
people can always expect content from you and they'll start to want to follow along. It's a great way to build a community. I also want you to keep in mind lead
generation, so don't just create. For creation's sake. I mean, I think at the beginning you
kind of have to just to sort of get your footing right and understand
what you like about these platforms, what content's resonating with people. But once you sort of get into your rhythm,
start to think about lead generations. So that means optimize your profiles. On my YouTube channel, if you
go to my About section, there is an email address there. My website is linked there so people
can easily get in touch with me. My social handles are all there. There is a description. Who I am so people can easily vet me
and decide if they wanna work with me. Same thing for my Instagram. I have directions on how people
can choose to work with me, how people can get in touch with me. You can use a tool like Link Tree
or Milkshake or just your own website to create a Lincoln Bio. So that if people come and view your
TikTok talks and wanna learn more about you, they can easily book a call
through that link tree or download something or you know, whatever
it is that you want people to do. Now, we already kind of talked about
websites, but it is important to really think through that buyer journey as well. What do you want people to do? What is the ultimate goal? After people view your TikTok or YouTube? What do you want people to do? In most cases, if you are
a service provider that. I'm gonna say your first goal should
either be to get people on a call or to collect an email address. And I would say usually
it's get people on a call. Email addresses can be great for
more passive products or physical products or digital products, right? Like courses or something like that. But if you're looking to actually speak
with somebody and work with them and get them to hire you, Get them on a call. Again, this is where a tool like
Honey Book comes really in handy because you can build up scheduling
links and encourage them to book a discovery call with you to learn more
about what you have to offer them. So again, make sure that your profiles
are optimized and also make sure that you are referencing these things
throughout your content in a soft. , smart, kind, delicate way, meaning I
don't get on the podcast Mike every single week and say, Hey, book a call with me. Hey, download this. Hey, join this. You know, I try not to do that, at least
I try to really lead value first, and I know a lot of people always ask me. How do I know I'm not giving
my best stuff away for free? How do I know if I teach people the five
things you need to be doing on Instagram, that my prospective clients aren't just
gonna start doing those things themselves? And there's no way to stop people
from doing that, number one. Number two, they're gonna get
that information somewhere. Unless you were in a super, super
specific niche where there's no other content, honestly, they're
gonna find that information. So why not let you be the
vessel that gives it to them? And lastly, you. What makes the service amazing? I know how to cut hair. In theory. I could watch a YouTube video of a
hairdresser cutting hair and doing layers and doing all these cool things. There is no way. That I can do that myself
on, on, on me or on anybody. I just haven't done it right. I just don't have the attention to detail. I haven't done it before. So yeah, there are gonna be people
who try to go out and do those same strategies that you talk about
in your content, but guess what? They're gonna realize it's really hard. They haven't studied up on it. They don't have the skill set for
it, and then they're gonna say, Wow, where did I learn about this strategy? Oh yeah, that girl on YouTube
or TikTok or Instagram or wherever, let's actually hire her. Or maybe not, but hey, I
think Giving freely has gotten me to a really good place. I think it also helps you build up your
trustworthiness with your audience. My last step I'm gonna share with you
about inbound marketing is to make sure you are creating content that your. Client wants to hear not what you
wanna hear, not what your peers wanna hear, not your friends want to hear. This is something that I have really had
to hammer into people over the years. You know, I'll often see social
media managers creating content for other social media managers, graphic
designers, teaching other graphic designers how to design logos. And that's fine if you wanna, you know,
educate people if you're just trying to build a community, if you're eventually
going to come out with some type of product or coaching or something. But if you are looking. Clients to hire you as a graphic designer,
you need to be talking about, you know, design trends and kind of giving them
that feel of FOMO that they need to get with the times and update their logos. Or maybe you talk specifically to a
niche if you're targeting startups, share articles and posts on. Trends in the startup world, it might
not even be related exactly to design. It can just be speaking
to that ideal person. So yes, inbound marketing
can definitely work. You just have to
demonstrate your expertise. You have to show people that you wanna
help, and you have to have an optimized profile and an optimized customer journey
that gets people from your content. Down to a discovery call or something
else, but in most cases a discovery call. So those are kind of the three pillars
in my client attraction strategy. I really hope this helps. We can probably go deeper on
each of those topics, I know. But if you have any questions for now,
feel free to leave them in the comments. If you're watching on YouTube,
if you are listing on the podcast platforms, you can send me a dm. Or a message on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok
at the Latasha James, if you have any questions or requests for future content,
and I really hope this was helpful. I hope you have a wonderful weekend,
and thanks so much for tuning in. Bye.
