Network For New Clients

By Azunga on May 31, 2013 | Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Client Client Information Design Online Advertising Portland Web Design

I get asked all the time about how Azunga meets, acquires, or obtains new clients.  Many times it’s either another business that we’re currently supporting with their marketing or a freelancer that’s just getting started looking for tips.

No matter which ways a freelancer or business acquires new clients it’s important to know a few things overall:

• Always be selling your service but don’t be that annoying pushy guy.  It doesn’t matter if you’re on vacation in Maui, walking to the corner store for a drink, or having dinner with friends.  Over do it and people will find you to be the annoying guy that never gets invited anywhere…
• Be prepared.  Have business cards to give, have your elevator pitch tuned, and have your web site ready for someone to look at it immediately for more information.
• Know what your talking about.  When you meet someone new you have no idea if they are a computer engineer or someone that doesn’t even know what a computer is.  Be able to explain things in detail and to be able to answer the questions people ask no matter how difficult.  This proves you are knowledgeable, worthy of hiring, and gives confidence in the client that your service is the right one for their needs.
• Be able to dumb things down when needed and get technical when needed.  Not everyone knows what a CSS Pseudo-classes are :)

There’s a ton more things to think about but those are a few we’ve come up with recently.

So where do you meet new people to sell them or get your brand out there?

• Word of mouth (the best way in our opinion)
• Build a great web site to showcase your services.
• In person networking groups such as Meetup.com.
• Online networking groups such as LinkedIn.com.
• Freelance web sites like elance.com, odesk.com and others.
• Craigslist (usually not the best quality projects and low paying).
• Pay Per Click Advertising (can get expensive).
• Review web sites such as Yelp, MerchantCircle, and others.
• Online bulletin boards and discussion forums.

Good Luck!

Tagged in: networking, promotion, referrals

Leave a Comment