How To Get Clients FAST
Whether you’re in a slump, completely new to the scene, or just desperately need to make some extra cash as soon as possible, every freelancer can relate to the need to find work in a hurry. These 6 tips for how to get clients fast should provide you everything you need to boost your sales as soon as today.
#1 Run a Flash Sale
A flash sale can be the perfect way to reignite interest in your services and capitalize on the fear of missing out (FOMO). If you aren’t familiar with the concept of a flash sale, it involves offering a very hefty discount for a very limited amount of time—24 hours or so. Even though you might be losing money on the initial sales, the real goal is to win new customers or remind old ones that you’re still here.
Sometimes, you’ve got past clients who just forgot that they needed your expertise. Or, they have had you in the back of their mind but weren’t ready to invest yet. A flash sale gives them an easy way to say “Yes!” to re-establishing a business relationship with you.
If you are looking for ideas on how to run a deal, don’t miss our list of 8 Sales Promotion Examples.
#2 Raise Your Prices
This might sound counterintuitive based on the last tip, but it’s really just the opposite side of the same coin.
You see, what customers in pretty much any industry want is value. That’s not the same as cheap. Value is that happy place where price and quality meet.
One reason you might not be getting the clients you want is because you’ve priced yourself out of the most popular markets. Maybe you’re too high for the economy-minded customer and too low for the value-minded customer.
By raising your prices, you are signaling to those higher end clients that you’ve got more to offer. Additionally, raising your prices allows you to announce “Last chance to claim my lower rates!” Like a flash sale, this is a classic marketing tactic for how to get clients fast by capitalizing on FOMO.
#3 Offer a New Specialized Service
As a freelancer, you make money because you solve problems. The more problems you can solve, the more money you can make.
If you are looking for how to get clients fast, launching a new service is a perfect way to attract work. The key is to solve a problem that no one else is solving, or to offer a service specialized enough that it will pair well with other services that clients are already buying from you. Make it a really niche micro-service that will quickly relieve a pain point.
For example, maybe you frequent SEO groups and message boards and notice a lot of people asking questions about adding review star schema to their websites. You could create a service to do this for them. Plenty of people would be happy to pay you to do it so that they don’t have to invest the time learning and implementing something as complicated as schema markup.
#4 Reach Out To Everyone on Your Client List
If you aren’t interested in running deals, raising prices, or creating new services, good old-fashioned outreach is still one of the best methods for how to find clients fast when you need them.
There’s no real art or science to it. Just be honest and personable—NOT spammy.
Open up your list of past clients, and spend a few minutes writing a personalized message to each of them. Additionally, if you are using any of the first three methods on our list, you can mention those as well. Something like this:
“Hey Tim! It was great working with your last week on _________. I’m trying to plan out my schedule for next week or so and was wondering if you would be needing my services. I’m also launching a new service that might compliment the other work I’ve done for you. You can check it out here.”
#5 Ask For Referrals (and Incentivize Them)
Another tactic to use while you’re reaching out to past clients is to ask for referrals. Freelancers often undervalue the power of referrals, but one report found that 83% of customers are happy to refer a business that they had a positive experience with and that leads from referrals convert about 30% better than average.
You’ve made plenty of people’s lives easier and businesses more fruitful. Why wouldn’t they want to tell their friends about you?
Think of it as a numbers game. Let’s say that you’ve had 30 past clients and, on average, they each know 3 other people in the same industry who could benefit from your services. That’s 90 potential clients that don’t know about you, but probably would if you just asked for a referral.
And, if you are selling on Legiit, don’t forget that you can incentivize referrals with our affiliate system. Your past clients can go to your service page, grab the affiliate link, and send it to their friends. If the referrals buy through that link, your client gets a percentage of the sale.
#6 Shamelessly Self-Promote on Legiit Mondays
Finally, if you are looking for how to get clients fast, there is probably no other freelance marketplace in the world that makes self-promotion as easy as Legiit does.
Every Monday, sellers have the opportunity to share their services in the Legiit Official Facebook Group. It’s the perfect way to advertise your flash sales, create buzz about your new services, or announce your soon-to-be-raised prices.
Buyers are also free to promote the affiliate links of the freelancers they know and love, so be sure to let your happy clients know about Legiit Mondays while you’re asking for referrals.