10 Highly Effective Tips To Get More Clients Online (From My Personal Experience!)

How do you get more clients online?

That’s a million dollar question right there!

My coaching program has been running for quite some time and I have learned a number of highly effective strategies to get more clients.

I will share some of the most important ones in this blog post.

Here’s how I get clients now

Currently, I get clients without doing any additional work (I focus on monetizing my website via other income streams and clients approach me organically). People read my blog or receive an email via my email list, receive value, and some decide to sign up for a clarity call to work with me.

If you’re new, getting your first few clients is really important. In this article, tips #1 – #5 will be focused on getting you there. These tips will help you get your first few clients in the fastest way possible.

Then, tips #6 – #10 will cover scaleable methods on how you can get clients. Most of these are things that I am doing right now for my own business.

Although I have reached a point in my business that I no longer rely on coaching clients and selling my time, I still do it because I love coaching. I especially love working with people with a can-do attitude. Being able to guide, nurture and mentor new bloggers and entrepreneurs is a privilege!

Without further ado, let’s go ahead with my favorite ways to get more clients.

10 tips on how to get more clients online

1. Reach out personally

This is not going to go down well for some of you, but it has to be said.

When you’re just starting out, you can’t be shy about reaching out to people 1:1. You have to get used to personal selling if you want to get clients.

Why? One-to-one interactions have the highest conversion rates because you can frame your program in a way that will suit their specific needs. No surprise, they will become more convinced that you can help them.

If you have friends, acquaintances or family that could do with your help, make sure you reach out to them personally. Helping someone get results will do a ton for your confidence, and not to mention you will have cash coming in.

We will get to more scalable methods later, but if you want to get more clients fast, talking to people 1 to 1 will get you there in the most efficient way. This is especially when your business is new and you may not seem so credible yet.

I wrote in my post about the best books for bloggers about something I learned from the book “Girl Boss”. Do you know how Sophia Amoruso kickstarted Nasty Gal (which eventually went on to make hundreds of millions in sales)? She added people on MySpace, one by one. Crazy, right?

Sometimes, you have to do the unscalable to reach a point where you can scale your business.

That being said, it’s not about being sleazy and going crazy PM-ing people about your program. No! It’s about showing them how you can help them.

For instance, if you have helped someone in a Facebook group for some time, you may want to reach out. However, cold PM-ing someone is not going to get you anywhere and may even result in negative consequences.

2. Follow-up

Most of the money is in the follow-up. What’s follow-up? When someone who you think is a good fit tells you no, you reach out to them again after a couple of weeks.

The objective isn’t to sell them again, but to keep the connection going and not lose touch. When they are ready to purchase, guess who they will think of?

Everyone operates on a different timeline. Just because someone isn’t interested now, doesn’t mean they will never be interested. Make it a point to have a system to follow-up with people.

Sounds tedious, but when you’re just starting out every lead counts. Keep a spreadsheet of who you have talked to and periodically reach out to people you have not connected with in awhile.

3. Know when to stop giving free

This is really important. If you’re doing free work for people, STOP. Just stop it.

I’m not talking about not writing blog posts or not having any freebies. I’m talking about free 1-1 help for a specific person.

This includes extensively answering someone’s questions via PM or email.

Don’t get me wrong, I answer a ton of reader’s questions because I want the best for everyone. But there’s a difference between helping someone out and becoming someone’s personal coach. You don’t respect your time, your boundaries, AND you’re doing the person a disservice.

First off, it’s not going to help you get a new client, trust me. Instead, the person is going to feel like she has received everything she needs from you for free already, and not hire you.

Also, if you have been offering “free help” to people, you need a mindset shift, that helping them for free and allowing them to “pick your brain” is actually doing them a disservice.

They hop off, thinking that they know everything that they need to know, but in reality, they are not going to get results because they don’t actually have it all.

4. Preview of value

If you can’t provide free help, what should you do? It is all about providing someone with enough value to convince them that you know your stuff.

This doesn’t mean bombarding them with information. You could…

• Tell them that you’ve worked with a specific client to fix their particular problem
• Give some of the broader strategies and then say that if they would like to go in-depth, to hop on a clarity call/ to sign up for your paid program.

The number of ways to do this is endless. The whole idea is to direct them to become a client and not let them over-step your boundaries where you end up becoming a “free-machine”.

At an appropriate juncture, tell them that they can learn how to do XYZ in your paid program, and ask them if they would like to hop on a call to explore if they would be a good fit.

5. Offer something that you would actually purchase yourself

Do you know what’s the first step to getting a client? Actually having something that is worth selling.

Yes, having a good offer!

If you were in your target audience, would you purchase from yourself?

This includes writing a compelling “hire me” page, coming up with a great program or service, and becoming crystal clear of the value that people will be paying you to receive.

It may sound so “duh” but this is crucial. You will be amazed at the number of people that miss this out!

There is no point wasting time or money on marketing if you don’t have something good to sell.

Okay! Now that you have the fundamentals in place, where do you actually find clients?

I cover a ton in this post –  50 Outstanding Ways To Market Your Business Online, where I cover a ton of ways you can find more clients online.

But in this post, I will cover certain KEY ways that come highly recommended from me.

6. Communities

Depending on your niche, you could find a community of people who would potentially purchase at places like Facebook groups, Reddit, forums, Linkedin, networking groups, meet-up groups, etc.

This is a fast way to get your first clients – by providing value and connecting with people directly.

A community is simply a place where people in your target audience hang out at. Get in there, provide value, and connect with people.

I have a Facebook group that you can request to join here!

7. Blogging

Blogging is an amazing way to get visible, provide a ton of value, and get more clients online.

Writing articles gets you more traffic via search engine optimization and social media. I owe all my success to blogging! You are seen as an expert, and it gives you an audience that knows, likes and trusts you.

If you want to learn how to start a blog the RIGHT way, please check this 4-part blogging for beginners series out:

Part 1. Blogging For Beginners: How to Start a Blog in 20 Minutes
Part 2. Can’t Decide What’s The Best Blogging Platform to Use? Answers here.
Part 3. 11 Things To Do Immediately After You Start a New Blog
Part 4. 11 WordPress Plugins That Will Rock Your Blog

The series has been shared more than 50,000 times and has helped thousands of bloggers start their blog so you’re in good hands!

8. Build an email list

Never under-estimate the power of your email list. Most of my clients who hire me have actually been reading my emails for a while.

Somewhere along the way, they decided that they liked me and knew that I could help them with their business.

Why? They were engaged and nurtured by my email list!

These 3 posts may help:

• List Building 101: How to Build An Email List That Makes Money (Cheatsheet Included)
• Why Building an Email List is a MUST for Your Blog & Business
• Why I Switched to Using Convertkit As My Email Service Provider

My free list building webinar on the 3 key strategies that got me 10,000 subscribers in the last 12 months:

• *Free Webinar: 3 Key “Ice To Fire” List Building Blueprints That Helped Me To Go From 5 To 40,527 Subscribers (& 10,582 Customers!)

9. Super cool tip: Link to your work with me page in every email

I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but here’s a tip: At the end of every email you send out, have a link to your work with me page.

I do that in every single email I send out, and it has helped a lot with getting me more clients.

10. Facebook ads

Okay, you have a valuable offer and you want to reach more people, like NOW.

Then, you could consider paid advertising, which will allow you to reach more people in a matter of days.

This is not uncommon – many businesses rely solely on paid advertising, and if that’s what you prefer, it definitely works.

Just make sure you have a great offer and a gameplan behind your ads – don’t just stick ads and flush your cash down the toilet.

Summary

Once again, here are the 10 ways you can get more clients online:

• Reach out personally
• Follow-up with people whom you’ve talked to you
• Know when to stop giving free help
• Preview of value
• Have a good offer
• Communities
• Blogging
• Build an email list
• Leave the link of your hire me page at the end of each email
• Facebook ads

I hope this post has helped you!

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the value I can provide you. If you’re interested in checking out my coaching program, check how I can help you here. 😉