How to reach potential clients?

Once you have defined exactly what you do, we need to ensure that you are targeting your marketing efforts in the right location.

We’ll cover an overview of the marketing options available to you, before drilling down into the details of each area in the coming posts.

By the end you will have an overview of the range of marketing opportunities available and where your focus should be directed.

Before we cover the main options you should always remember that your return on the investment of time and money must be considered.

You should have a specific goal for what you want to achieve from the individual marketing channel you use, and measure your results towards this.

Initially you may try quite a few different marketing channels, but as you start to generate leads you should review what is working best and then focus your efforts on that. As a result, you will achieve greater success rather than continuing to distribute your time amongst several channels. Depending on your business, different channels will bring better results.

When marketing you have to consider where your likely clients will be. It is no use spending all your time on Facebook for example if none of them use it. Similarly, if you focus your efforts on a high-end local magazine, but the distribution area doesn’t contain your typical clients then that would be time wasted as well.

Some of the main channels to consider are:

Websites – your website will most likely be one of the best ways for people to find you and should be a priority. In the next post I cover why you should always have your own site, rather than rely on using pages hosted on someone else’s site

Blogging and video – if you are looking to increase traffic to your site and attract visitors then these can bring good results. I’ll cover how you can easily get started with them.

Face to face networking – people are usually told to ‘go networking’ when they start, in order to get business. But I’ll share a shocking fact about this that many people miss.

Online networking & social media – there are many groups and forums on the internet catering for areas relevant to your business and clients, so this could be a good source. There are also time and cost savings to be had from meetings held online. I’ll cover an introduction to social media, and how you can include this with no time cost to you.

Paid advertising – whether this is online or in print, you need to ensure that you will be seen by your target audience, and that the cost per client acquired is reasonable.

Free marketing resources – there are a large number of sites and directories that offer free marketing, but you might not realise that this could actually damage your results if not used carefully. I’ll cover the pitfalls, and also how to make the most of the opportunities.

We’ve covered the main channels to focus on when looking for business. You should start to narrow your focus as you are getting results.

Also, don’t make the mistake of continuing to spend large amounts of money against a source that is not generating leads.

You should be aware that large companies will be able to spend large marketing budgets, so to compete you should instead be focusing on areas where you can have the same impact at low-cost.