Finding Clients For Your Business: The Complete Guide (2017 Update)

Reddit

Redditors hate marketing.

This is what almost every marketer I've met thinks.

But the reality is somewhat different.

Redditors hate BS.. and self-promotion.. and reposts.

Yet, Reddit is an absolute goldmine when it comes to finding clients.

Why, you may ask?

Because subreddits group your ideal clients together, in one place.

So how do you attract redditors to your website?

You do so by using the Added Value Technique.

Applying the Added Value Technique

Step 1: Do your research

If you stick around on any subreddit, you'll soon realize that users are mostly asking the same questions.

So, a great way to understand what subreddit users commonly search for, and ask, is to use a Reddit keyword research tool, such as Keyworddit.

Step 2: Build resources that answer frequently asked questions

Now that you know what users are talking about, all you need to do is build content that answers their questions.

For example, by searching the Startups subreddit, you can start finding topics you might want to write about.

Based on these search results, you might want to, for example, write an article that clearly outlines how your company uses SCRUM.

Also, make sure that all of your content aligns to your overall SEO Strategy.

Step 3: Listen to new conversations

The next step is to monitor keyword mentions on that particular subreddit.

You can do so by using a tool like TrackReddit.

Step 4: Add value to those conversations

Now that you are getting alerted when your keywords are mention, your next goal is to act fast.

Leave a comment that uses an extract from your article.

Tell a story.

People tend to respond much better to stories, rather than advice.

When you're done, state that you have a guide, and that with their permission, you can send them your guide via private message.

If your answer is spot on, curiosity will get other people to ask you for your guide.

Once you get a lot of people asking for your guide, share a link in the comments section.

Niche social bookmarking sites

The Added Value Technique can also be applied across different channels.

For example, you can similarly apply this technique on niche social bookmarking sites, such as Inbound (Marketing audience) and HackerNews (Startups and Technology audience).

Quora

"Quora is littered with spam. Most of the questions I saw on Quora where about dating, how to raise your kids and how to get rich."

This is what a friend of mine told me when I asked him to join the Quora community.

It's true, there might be some weird questions on Quora, like well.. everywhere else on the internet.

Yet, Quora is a great channel when it comes to getting highly targeted traffic to your website.

Getting traffic from Quora

Step 1: Find relevant topics

Look for topics where you can demonstrate relevant expertise.

The best way to find topics is through Quora's sitemap.

To get your answers in front of a larger user base, make sure you choose topics with a large number of followers.

Step 2: Find questions with a large number of followers

The next step is to find questions with a lot of followers.

When answering a question, the question's followers are immediately notified on Quora.

Also, having a lot of eyeballs on your answer increases your chances of being upvoted.

This, in turn, makes your answer appear into various user feeds.

Step 3: Build a killer Quora profile

Your next job is to optimize your Quora profile to maximize traffic to your website/landing page.

Make sure to include a:

• Brief description of yourself and your offering
• Link to your website
• Reason why people should follow you on Quora

Setting up an online community is a great way of building a highly engaged and highly targeted audience.

There is a plethora of platforms you could use to do just that, but here are just some examples to help you get creative.

• Setting up a LinkedIn group
• Setting up a Facebook group
• Setting up a Slack community
• Setting up a Subreddit
• Creating your custom online forum

There are 3 major benefits of building an online community.

• Repeat engagement.
• Highly targeted list.
• User generated content.

Setting up an online community

Step 1: Check the competition

Your first job when building an online community is to understand your competition.

• How did they get started?
• How active is the community?
• Is the community shifting to other platforms?
• Does the audience consume content across multiple communities?
• How do the community managers handle spam?

Step 2: Find your niche

Now that you have an idea of who you're competing with, your next goal is to find your niche.

This means that you'll need to figure out your ideal community individual.

• What content are they looking to consume?
• Which type of discussions are they looking for?

Your goal is to talk to your potential audience.

Step 3: Optimize for growth

Finally, you need to understand that building a community takes a long time and effort.

The best way to grow your community is to think about growth from the very start.

Does the community have the necessary hooks to help your members attract new community members?

Does it have the necessary incentives?

There are a lot of ways you could grow your online community, including:

• Bringing organic traffic through user generated content
• Set up small and effective SEM campaigns
• Attract traffic from Q&A sites
• Attract traffic from adjacent/parallel subreddits by applying the Added Value Technique

One of the best way to get highly converting referral traffic is to get your product or service mentioned by high quality blogs in your niche.

Blogs your customers love and respect.

Targeted blog traffic is great because it:

• Helps you build a brand.
• Brings in highly-targeted sales leads.
• Is easy to scale.
• Can be implemented at any budget.

Getting started with targeting blogs

Step 1: Find relevant blogs in your niche

Your first goal is to research highly relevant blogs in your niche with an engaged audience. The best way to get started is to find out where your competitors are getting mentioned. Other methods you could use include:

• Look for people promoting their blog on Quora (on niche related questions)
• Find blogs on Alltop
• Find people with a highly-engaged Twitter following using tools such as FollowerWonk.

Step 2: Set up a highly compelling email

Now that you've compiled a list of potential targets, your next job is to let them know about your offering. In the smart emailing section, I've included some pitching tips you could use to improve your odds.

SEO is dead.

No, "Buying a thousand links on Fiverr for $5" is dead.

As long as search engines exist and people still use them to find relevant information, search engine optimization will endure.

So, how do you get found on Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo?

What do you need and where do you get started?

First of all you need to understand that SEO is a long-term investment.

It is also a bit of a polarizing topic - there is literally an endless amount of resources online, mostly divulging contradicting information.

Getting started with SEO

Step 1: Find relevant keywords

If you want to get in front of your potential clients, you need to understand what users are searching for.

• Fat head keywords. These are higher level, less specific terms users use when querying search engines. An example fat head keyword would be: "project management".
• Long tail keywords. These are very specific terms users use when querying search engines. An example long tail keyword would be: "project management software for small teams".

When targeting keywords, the most important parameters to look for are:

• Search intent.
• Competition.
• Search traffic.

There are many tools that could help you with keyword research.

Some of the most widely used options include:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Ahrefs
• SEMRush
• Serpstat
• MajesticSEO

Step 2: Build compelling, search engine optimized content.

So, how do you target your ideal keywords?

You do so by writing compelling, keyword-optimized content (blog posts, landing pages, resource pages, round ups and more).

Here's a great guide on how to do just that.

To optimize your content, you need to strategically use your target keywords in your page:

• Title
• Meta Description
• Main Heading (H1)
• Secondary Heading (H2)
• Content (Use 2 to 3 times, avoid keyword stuffing)

Also, make sure to include Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords in your content.

LSI Keywords helps search engines understand context. So, if you're talking about Apple (the brand), you might want to include keywords that are connected to that brand, like "Apple Watch".

To find LSI keywords, use the "Related Searches" feature on Google:

Step 3: Build quality links to your content.

The next step is to set up your link building strategy.

When setting up your strategy, make sure you avoid the common pitfalls - such as buying or building spammy links.

You need to understand the Google Webmaster Guidelines and more specifically, the repercussions of having your website flagged by the Google Penguin algorithm.

As for building links, the best way to get started is to reverse engineer your competitors link building strategy.

To get started, you'll need to use a backlink checker tool, such as Ahrefs or Serpstat.

Step 4: Track your progress.

Finally, you'll need to track your progress.

Are you ranking for your target keywords?

Are there any other keywords you might optimize for?

Who is linking to your content?

To answer these questions, you will need to get familiar with Google Search Console.

In recent years, "content is king" has become sort of a cliché.

If you ask any marketer out there, they'll tell you that content should be central to your marketing campaign.

And they are right.

When executed properly, building and distributing high quality content can pay huge dividends.

So, what are the benefits of building high quality content?

• You build a brand.
• You build an audience.
• You get high quality traffic.
• You start creating relationships with influencers in your niche.
• You accelerate your link building efforts.

Building high-quality content

Step 1: Find out what your audience wants

Your first job is to map out what your audience wants.

For example, most of our clients and existing blog followers are digital agencies, startups and entrepreneurs.

They don't care about database, CRM and project management software.

They care about how they are going to improve their cash flow, get more productive and grow their business.

And that's exactly what we're writing about.

By understanding what they want, we're creating content that solves their needs.

So to get started, search on Quora and Reddit what your audience cares about.

That's the kind of content you need to build.

Step 2: Build your content strategy

Your next step is to set up your content strategy.

Which type of content resonates with your audience?

Here's a quick list to get you started:

• Blog Posts.
• Youtube Videos.
• Slides.
• Interactive Maps.
• Infographics.
• Microblogging.

Step 4: Set up your content distribution strategy

Now that you know what content you need to build, your next goal is to find ways on how to distribute your content and get as many eyeballs as possible.

Here's a quick list to get you started:

• Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).
• Q&A sites (Quora, Yahoo Answers, StackExchange).
• Social bookmarking sites (Reddit, Inbound).
• Niche influencers.
• Competitor research.
• Newsletter targeting.

Have you ever used an online calculator to calculate your net salary?

Or maybe use an online website grader, that scores your website and lists a number of possible improvements.

These two are perfect examples of how you can use your engineering talent to attract and close leads.

It also helps with:

• Brand awareness.
• Harnessing the power of reciprocity.

Getting your marketing and engineering team to work together

Step 1: Build an audience

Before building your online tool, build an audience.

You can do by using your existing distribution channels, such as, for example, your blog.

Step 2: Talk to your audience

Now that you've got a solid list (your blog audience + your existing customers), your next job is to leverage their collective knowledge.

What questions are they asking?

How can you empower your audience?

For example, if you're offering web development services and you've built an audience of non-techies, they might need to solve problems like:

• How much is my website going to cost?
• Can I build the website myself? What specific knowledge do I need?
• How do I market my website? What are the attached costs?

You can build a tool that answers these exact questions.

Step 3: Build a solution to solve those pain points

Finally, your goal is to promote your tool.

And, because you've already built an audience, you can do so by leveraging their network.

Make the tool easily shareable and add incentives for those who share it.

Being controversial pays dividends.

People like linking to and sharing opinions that affirm their controversial views.

It can help with your SEO efforts, propel your answers on Q&A sites and kickstart heated discussions on your blog content (resulting in more traffic).

Also, being both controversial and genuine can help you amass a cult following.

Just look at Gordon Ramsay and Gary Vaynerchuk.

Creating controversy

Step 1: Find a topic a vocal majority agrees with

If you're answering questions on Q&A sites or building content, just check out what the vast majority thinks about that particular topic.

Step 2: Share an opposing view

Your next job is to share an opposing view that has a non-vocal minority.

Chances are that people online are speaking about your product or service.

They might be comparing you to one of your competitors.

Or maybe telling other users (read: potential clients) how bad your offering is.

Now, what if you could turn those mentions into opportunities?

The truth is that caring about your customers can make all the difference in a very noisy world.

Helping potential customers out and letting them know how they can solve their problem is a great way to let people know that you care.

Turning online mentions into clients

Step 1: Monitor online mentions

There are a lot of tools you could use to monitor brand mentions.

Two such tools are Mention and Google Alerts.

If you're using Slack or HipChat, you might also want to check out Notify.ly.

Step 2: Turn mentions into opportunities

The next job is to turn your online mentions into opportunities.

• Link to valuable resources. When your company or your competitors get mentioned, help users out by linking out to free resources available on your site.
• Turn mentions into backlinks. When bloggers mention your company, they might forget to link back. By turning mentions into backlinks, you can propel your overall SEO Strategy.

Smart emailing, when executed properly, can unleash a new world of opportunities.

In fact, it is one of the most solid, tried and tested sources for new clients at Fusioo.

So, what exactly is smart emailing and is it legal?

Smart emailing is the act of researching, contacting and warming up your relationship prior to sending business related emails.

If you're not sure whether it's legal or not for your particular use case, make sure to check out this guide.

The benefits of smart emailing include:

• Targeting your ideal clients.
• Non-blocking, asynchronous channel. (unlike cold calling)
• Easy to track, monitor, improve and scale.

Getting started with smart emailing

Step 1: Research your prospects

Smart emailing is all about researching and targeting the right prospects.

Your #1 goal is to clearly define your ideal customer.

Ask yourself, which customers would be the best fit for my product or service?

Step 2: Pitch wisely

Now that you've created a list of ideal prospects, your next job is to pitch them your product help them solve their problems.

When pitching, make sure you:

• Write a great subject.
• Start with familiarity.
• Keep your email short and sweet.
• Understand what's in it for them. How would you react if you received the same email?
• Make it easy for them to take action.
• Add social proof.

Your target clients are already hanging out somewhere online.

Your job is to, well, find out where they are hanging out.

In a nutshell, niche communities are online channels where people hang out to build relationships and strengthen their subject knowledge.

There are many forms of niche communities, but in my opinion, the best ones are usually small, profile based and spam free.

Building your presence on niche communities

Step 1: Find niche communities

Niche communities come in many shapes and forms.

What I found is that contributing to profile based communities helps with building better rapport.

So, slack communities or other profile based networks (such as Inbound) are much better at building rapport then nickname based/anonymous communities, such as Reddit or IRC channels.

To find slack communities related to your niche, you can check out the following directories:

• Hamsterpad
• Slack List

Step 2: Build connections

The next step is to contribute to ongoing discussions.

Don't bother about ROI at first.

Just focus on sharing your knowledge and helping people out.

Trying to blatantly sell your product or service will not only annoy other members but will also potentially get you banned.

Affiliate programs are not for everyone.

An affiliate program is an agreement where an affiliate business sends traffic to your business, for a specified fee.

The agreement will specify how and when your affiliate is paid.

For example, you might pay your affiliates for a set amount of traffic or when someone has purchased something from your website.

When properly executed, affiliate programs can be an incredible way to scale your company without scaling marketing or business development resources.

In fact, big companies like Amazon and Netflix are constantly using affiliate programs to grow their revenue.

When does it make sense to work with affiliates?

• You know your numbers. Most importantly your customer acquisition cost, your customer lifetime value and your profit margins.
• You know your target client. Knowing your target market will help you get laser focused on building win-win relationships from the get-go.
• You trust your affiliates. Some affiliates might damage your reputation. Make sure you know exactly who you're dealing with.
• You affiliates are also your clients. The best referrals will usually come from those who love your offering.
• Your affiliates want to keep it as simple as possible. When starting out, focus on setting up a very simple profit sharing model.