Your business needs clients. But leads cost money. Right? And you don’t have a PR person working for your business. So what can you do?
Thankfully, there are a number of ways to get clients without spending any money. In this guide, we walk through why it’s so important to have a marketing strategy, along with specific strategies for attracting new business without paying for it.
At GrowthMap, we’ve helped a lot of clients go from Startup to full-time. Generally, we do this with a combination of Google ads, Facebook ads, and SEO.
But the traffic source doesn’t matter. YouTube, blog content marketing, social media posting, hanging flyers on bulletin boards, holding signs on street corners, and marketing events are just a few of the successful traffic-generating strategies that we have seen implemented.
Generally, what separates a winning campaign from a failing one, is whether or not their is a clear marketing strategy.
A lot of business owners have the same struggle as a dog who is chasing a car: what do you do when you catch the car?
It’s easy to get attention: paint your hair purple, or drop a well-timed “Hawk Tuah”. There is something new and viral every week. Attention (and traffic) are the easier parts.
But what do you do with the attention once you have it?
Getting the right attention from the right people and converting that into buying customers – that’s the real trick.
This is where marketing strategy comes in.
A marketing strategy has a few core pieces.
First, a clear marketing strategy helps you understand your target audience. To attract potential customers, you need to have a clear idea of who you’re marketing to. You need to understand their desires, goals, fears, struggles, pain points, etc. If you don’t have a thorough understanding of your target audience, your marketing probably won’t connect with new customers. Rather, you’ll just be wasting effort on untargeted marketing.
A marketing strategy also helps you have clarity regarding your ideal client. The simple truth is that your product or service isn’t for everyone. It’s designed for a very specific group of people, and if you want to attract more customers you need a clear understanding of your perfect client. Don’t spend time marketing to people who won’t ever buy your products or services. Use a marketing strategy to identify your ideal clients.
Third, a concrete marketing strategy helps you allocate resources effectively. You’re able to spend your time and energy on the things that will move the needle most. Instead of randomly selecting various marketing tactics, you can know which ones will work most effectively and resonate most with your audience. You have a limited amount of marketing resources to use to get new customers. A marketing strategy ensures that you focus your resources where they will be most effective.
Finally, a marketing strategy helps you stay ahead of the competition. A marketing strategy allows you to determine exactly how you’re going to beat other businesses. Creating a marketing strategy forces you to take a hard look at the competition and define their strengths and weaknesses. Once you have a firm grasp on how they’re doing marketing, you can create a plan that allows you to acquire new business before your rivals do.
It’s not easy to attract more clients without spending a dime. You need specific strategies and tactics if you’re going to get the attention of new customers without investing any money. Here are 9 ways you can get more clients for free.
Your social media presence can be your superpower if you use it correctly. After all, there are billions of people using multiple social media platforms every single day. You can be 100% sure that your audience is on these platforms.
But here’s the thing. You can’t just post once a day on a single platform and expect your social media presence to grow. You need a plan for posting multiple times per day and engaging with potential customers who might need your services.
While there is some debate about exactly how much you should post every single day, Hootsuite recommends the following schedule:
I know what you’re thinking. That’s a lot of time to spend posting content on social media. You have a business to run and customers to serve. How are you supposed to do all that?
The best strategy is to start with one social media platform and build your presence on that platform. Don’t spread yourself too thin. If you’re a B2B company, give your attention to LinkedIn. If you’re B2C, spend your time on Instagram or Facebook. It’s better to have a strong social media strategy on one platform than to be spread thin across a bunch of them.
Cold emails are another effective way to attract new clients without spending money. Despite being used for 30+ years, email is still a powerful way to connect with potential customers. However, you have to be careful with cold emails. If you use this tactic too often, your business might be seen as spammy or illegitimate. You may even get penalized by email providers.
So, assuming you obtained your email list in ethical ways, how many cold emails should you send? Email marketing service Lemlist recommends sending between 4-9 follow-up emails after you obtain someone’s email address. This allows you to promote your products or services without being too spammy.
Networking events are new business waiting to happen. But you have to prepare to make the most out of these events. Start by determining who you want to meet with. Will there be any former colleagues in attendance who might be able to provide you with new leads? What about potential clients or partners?
If possible, research these people so that you can communicate with them most effectively. Also, practice your pitch so that you can deliver it quickly and efficiently while still communicating the value your company brings.
And don’t forget to get the contact information of any potential clients you meet. Then follow up with them afterward through email, phone call, or even social media.
Your website is a potential gold mine when it comes to getting new customers. You already have some traffic coming to your site. If you can capture that traffic in some way you can convert it into new business.
You probably have some sort of contact form on your site, but that’s not enough. You also should have a flytrap offer, in which you give away something free of value in exchange for a visitor’s email address. this can significantly increase the number of leads you get through your website. Once you have a person’s email address, you can follow up with them through an email nurture sequence.
If you can partner with other small businesses that are complementary to yours (not competing), you can expand your audience and reach new customers. For example, say that you own a photography business and you have a friend who has a home staging business. Your friend will need someone to take professional photos of houses they have staged. You have the opportunity to tap into that audience through your friend.
Are there any local businesses that complement yours and who might be willing to team up with you? Consider reaching out to them and offering some sort of deal where you trade services with each other and utilize each other’s audiences.
If you’re just starting out and have hardly any clients, giving away some free service can be an effective way to get more customers. This doesn’t have to be your full service. Rather, offer a small part of your service as a way to attract new clients. Once you have your foot in the door, you can offer these people more expensive services.
Back to the photographer example. You could give away mini photo sessions for free and then upsell those people on your more expensive photo packages. Or say you’re a marketing consultant. You could offer a free 15-minute consult with the option of expanding to a full hour.
Whatever you give away has to be valuable. Don’t expect to get new clients if you give away something nobody wants.
You have a network of people who are already willing to spread the word about your business. Your friends and family can do word-of-mouth marketing, which is the most effective kind of marketing there is. Ask them to tell their friends and family about the services you offer and why those services are valuable.
If you really want to incentivize your personal network, you could offer an incentive for each referral they generate. It could be something as small as a gift certificate all the way up to a significant monetary reward.
There are a number of free tools that you can use to create and capture leads. These tools are a cost-effective way to grow your business without spending a dollar. Some of these free tools include:
Take some time to explore each of these tools and see how you might implement them in your business.
The good news is that there are many ways to attract clients without spending any money. These strategies require some creativity and good ol’ fashioned elbow grease, but they’re worth the effort. You can grow your business without breaking the bank.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, start with just one of the above strategies and focus on it until you start seeing success. Then move on to another strategy and do the same thing. Before you know it, you’ll have a steady stream of leads coming in without any money going out.
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