Becoming a freelancer is one of the best ways to make money online as long as you get clients. I was getting new clients using the cold outreach emails manually but then switched to automated outreach systems. Since then, I don’t have to chase new clients.
It doesn’t matter the profession you’re in when reading this article, as I’m going to teach you how to get new clients consistently regardless of whether you’re a blogger, marketer, web developer, virtual assistant, or the other sort.
WHY NOT ONLY USE THE POPULAR ONLINE FREELANCER PLATFORMS?
As I began working on my own, I used websites like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer as being simple to locate customers, and relied on them heavily. These platforms were simple to use and they’ve got tons of traffic every day, which is a good source for finding new clients.
These platforms started fantastically. These sites used to be very impressive when they were first built. But, in certain cases, the clients end up recruiting the cheapest freelancer. It ends up that most freelancers have to fight for new clients with price battles, month after month.
During my normal daily work hunting, I was spending hours a day applying for each job on these platforms but felt that there must be an easier way to find new clients who would pay a decent price, and hence, began cold emailing for companies. I said to myself, the sky is the limit, but the internet is limitless!
Here is how I accomplished successful cold marketing outreach.
1. FIND MORE PROSPECTS IN YOUR TARGET MARKET
To stand out from the crowd, you must fit into a niche and then start your cold outreach.
If much of your writing is done on property investment, then find a list of 100 business websites that have bought or developed property for your customers.
If you’re a web designer, collect 100 travel websites in this niche.
You can have a list of 100 contacts in the retail sector if you’re an email marketer that helping people in the retail market niche.
You have to customize your email to your prospect so you’ll be able to make a positive selling point because you have already helped someone close to them before.
Start by discovering businesses in your local area, and move outward from there.
When you make your presentations locally, people are more inclined to partner with you, and when they do so, you won’t have to go too far and travelling around.
It’s good to hire someone on the freelancer platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, or Freelancer to help you prospecting these 100 target prospects. I’ve delegated this prospecting process and it saved me lots of time.
When I advise my freelancers that all clients must follow these conditions, I refer them to my outsourcing contract and state clearly:
About 2,000 and 10,000 Facebook followers – This suggests that the company is expanding, which means they have the funds to spend on you.
More than two of their social media pages have been engaged or updated in the last seven days, which is a positive indication that they are still active in the business.
As my business is focused on English-speaking countries, the emails must be sent only to countries where English is the official language. If all my emails are in English, so it makes it easy for people who use English as a first language.
Has to be connected to a sector of the niche – The prospects’ websites must be linked to the same niche or the same kind.
For this outsourcing task, normally I’ll pay US$35 to the freelancer for a list of 100 contacts, including name, address, and email leads, with the requirements that I set before.
2. CONTENT WRITING
One of the biggest challenges for cold marketing outreach is that my target prospects will always receive cold marketing emails that look pretty much the same or alike.
And if you are a blogger, you’ve likely sent emails like this:
You won’t get an answer to this kind of cold mail.
The best solution to this will be: Write a blog post (at least 800 words) that is beneficial to your prospects.
For instance, if you’re a B2B (business-to-business) marketer, write a blog post on: “5 Advertising Tips Companies Should Use to Draw Prospects”
If you are a property investment blogger, write an article on: “How A Lead Magnet Could Boost The Sales Of Property”. The idea is, write articles that can help or meaningful to your prospects
The article should provide customers with anything they can immediately relevant for their business, while also building your image as an authority
This piece of the article just has to be published once and you can submit it out over and over and over again; It is also appropriate to use a video instead of a blog. Many video-making tools can help you make professional, convincing footage for your target markets. (Later, I’ll talk about how to make a promo video that converts. So please stay tuned.)
3. SENDING THE OUTREACH EMAIL
Do not begin your emails with “Hello, there”, “Hi there”. This is a very bad intro.
Look at the business’ website’s “About Us” or “Our Story” page to learn more about the history of the business. These pages usually showing the details about the chief executive or founder.
The CEO, founder, or higher seniority personal is your target receiver. So always address your outreach email to them.
Email Validation
You can validate their emails on some email checker websites, many of those are free of charge. This process will increase your email delivery ratio.
If you do not have their name, use an email search engine like the checker to locate their contact details.
Instead of emails like info@ or support@, it’s best to use emails to the founder to increase the likelihood of getting a response. Email of info@ or support@ normally has a great chance of passing to the wrong target person.
In your email, be complimentary to their company, notice something that could be enhanced and give advice about how to make things better. This shows a lot of work has been put into learning about them on your side and the email they get is not by mass mailing.
If they have a good story on why or how their company began on the About Us page, you can add some sort of comment to your email as well. This helps to build a closer rapport.
Then, describe yourself on their website and suggest something that needs improvement.
Send candid reviews on their websites. If they use Facebook, pay attention to the advertisements that are running and let them know how you feel about them.
Then, at the end of the email, remember to lead them to your blog post that was written especially for their niche, ask them to read it so they will benefit from it, and ask them to respond to your email if they have any questions.
Then you just sit back and relax. Waiting for the next move.
If they respond, you will begin escalating to get them on the phone and pitch your services.
NOW IT’S YOUR TIME TO ACTION
The sooner you have this list, the better.
A 10% or higher reaction rate is appropriate, depending on the nature of your emails and material. This is why I propose assembling a list of 100 or more prospects.
When I’m searching for potential customers, I get a list of 100 candidates and contact ten of them every day before one of them converts.
I’ll also use the email auto-sequencing software to re-target the unresponsive leads automatically, especially for cold lead outreach. (There is some good software that helps to auto-contact my cold lead based on my preset criteria. I’ll have another article on this topic soon. Please stay tuned as well 
)
This proactive approach can be a good tactic to attract new clients with cold email outreach.
The most exciting thing is, you don’t need to compete with dozens of other freelancers on those freelancer platforms with prices at the same time. And so you don’t need to go cheap on pricing, as you have built your branding along the way.
And, you can have prospect leads that consistently flow in automatically.
If you want to speed up your business growth, you can also try this new way of Ethical Email Marketing to drive more revenue, more sales, and more commissions for you in 2021.
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