Believe it or not, email is still one of the best ways to market your business. It is estimated that there are 4 billion active email users right now (and that number is projected to increase). According to MarketingSherpa, email is STILL the most preferred marketing channel that most consumers want businesses to communicate with them through.

And not only is email your consumer’s favorite way of communicating but your list is YOURS. It belongs to you. If Instagram shuts your account down, you lose all of your followers. However, that email list you’ve built, you own it and will always be able to market to them.

So now that you know how important email is, you might be wondering how the heck you build an email list and fast? In this blog, we break down our best kept secrets to build your email list.

Start with Your Services

You probably have some ideas for what you can offer to clients. What you want to make sure of, though, is that you aren’t niching down too much, too soon. A big mistake we see a lot of service providers make is that they get super niched with their offer, like only offering sales page copywriting to cookbook creators. Then, they find it’s really hard to land that type of client because they’ve never done those services or worked with those people before.

We encourage you to not feel pressured to have it all figured out from the jump. What are a small variety of services within your wheelhouse that you can offer temporarily? It’s okay to have a handful of services as long as your goal is to niche down in time once you discover what you’re really good at, what you love doing, and who you love working with because it may change. It wouldn’t be uncommon, for example, to start as a general VA then niche down to OBM services for fashion designers. You just never know!

Outline Your Processes

Before you launch and start taking on clients, you have to make sure you have some processes that will run smoothly, at least for now. This can totally be your MVP version and then spend time later investing in better systems. However, even though you wouldn’t be the first person to send a PDF Proposal, send contracts through DocuSign, and then invoice through Wave, we suggest you take a look at Dubsado first. It’s an all-in-one CRM that’s only $40 per month (tax write off!). You get your first three clients for free with no time limit, but using our link gets you 30% off your first month or year when you upgrade.

Here’s a guide we wrote on Dubsado, so you can see what it’s all about.

WHAT ABOUT PROJECT MANAGEMENT?

When it comes to organizing your project tasks, there are lots of project management systems out there. Our preferred tool in our business is Asana, but there are similar tools like ClickUp and Trello (we worked out of both for years) that work great for a lot of beginner service providers. You shouldn’t need a super robust project management system, and we don’t recommend one for the time being anyway. Once you start working with clients, you’ll find what processes work best for now.

What to Know about Client Experience

It’s no joke that the client experience is one of the most important parts of working with clients, but a little can go a long way when you’re starting out. The trifecta of a great client experience is all about clear communication, expectations, and boundaries. Remember those three words, and you’re bound to have clients who’ve had an awesome time working with you. Be sure they know your preferred methods of communication, outline clear office hours and stick to them (we’re lookin’ at you, people pleaser), they should know what you expect of them and when, and treat your boundaries like they’re the absolute most important thing in the world.

In the beginning especially, it’s really easy to allow clients to scope creep and start adding on additional services for them that they aren’t actually paying for. Nip it in the bud before it starts, but if you notice this is a consistent issue, here’s how to fire a client or at least try to resolve the issue before it leads to that.

Reach Out to Your Network

Those already within your circle will absolutely be the best folks to tell that you’ve officially launched your services. Word of mouth travels fast, and referrals are the most impactful method of lead generation. Tell your family and friends (even if they’re only Facebook friends). You know your aunt’s friend’s cousin that might have an interest in your services? Get their contact info and reach out to them, even if it’s only to ask for more possible connections. For more ideas, listen to this podcast episode where we dish about How to Get the Best Organic Referrals and Network Like a Boss.

A simple cold email to ask for introductions will serve you better than traditional marketing tactics, especially when you’re first starting out and don’t have an audience. By all means, post on Instagram and start making connections on other platforms, too, but don’t put all your eggs into the social media or email marketing baskets. You may find that you’re talking to everyone and no one at the same time.

What to Do After Landing Clients

Once you’ve let the networking, introductions, and referrals do their magic and you’ve started landing clients, then what? We encourage you to look deeper into your client experience, which eventually allows you to raise your prices, collect even more amazing testimonials, and let referrals automate themselves because clients will be more than happy to tell others about your business.

Read this blog post that breaks down what components make up the client experience, why it’s so important, and how you can amplify yours to keep making your clients want to come back for more projects, or at least bring you more dreamy clients.

Need Help Having Hard Conversations with Clients?

If you’re an introvert, we’ve got you! We created 3 (technically 4) scripts to generate revenue without new leads by:

Turning to your circle, and past and existing clients to ask for connections
Re-establishing expectations due to scope creep
Notifying clients that you’ll be increasing their contracts
Following up with past clients to introduce them to new services or re-sell them to your existing services

You can have these scripts delivered to your inbox right now by heading here! Then, send us a DM on Instagram @bossproject if you need to workshop how to customize the scripts or just let us know how they’re working for you.

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