Sick of social media? Here are 6 ways to get clients without showing up online

This episode is by popular demand—my mid-year audience survey showed me that (a) most of you are starting to feel burned out and sick of social media, and (b) you have no idea where else to get clients. In today's episode, I'm sharing 6 ways to get clients without showing up online.

– Why attending in-person events can help you to build your network and business opportunities.
– How sharing your offers with your current network can help you to reach ideal clients you may not have otherwise been able to reach.
– How reaching out to past clients who already know, like and trust you can help you to solve more problems for them, or their peers.
– Why sharing value with your dream clients will help you get your pitches to them over the line.
– The power of pitching to relevant podcasters or course creators and how this can really scale your business.

 

 
Today's episode is by popular demand from my mid-year audience survey, which showed me that most of you are starting to feel a bit burnt out and sick of showing up on social media and you also have no idea where else to get clients. This question came up over and over and over again.

Now I do want to say I have built a lot of my business by showing up consistently online, mostly from this podcast, which is then repurposed into social media content, and that consistency that I've shown up with this content has helped to build trust. But I also do have a team that helps me with a lot of it. 

Now, it used to just be me doing all of it and I can say that it is a lot of work. I know that not everyone has the bandwidth to create and share as much content as I do online and it can be really exhausting.

So if you are feeling completely burnt out on social media, I'm sharing six things that you can do instead to get new clients. Now, most of these approaches don't scale. They aren't something that you can do to get a thousand sales of your online course, but they'll help you if you want to bring in a few one-on-one clients or a few higher ticket course clients for example through the door and then perhaps you can look at reinvesting that cash flow into hiring somebody who can help you with all of the other things that will grow your audience and help you to get more clients at scale.

I think one of the biggest mistakes that many new business owners make and even ones who've been at it for a few years, they skip the things that don't scale at the start. These are actually the things that will help you to build momentum so that you can start focusing on the things that do scale.

So let's jump into the six things you can do to get new clients outside of social media. 

 

#1: Go to in-person events, meetups, conferences, etc.

I know a lot of you are not going to like this one, go to in-person events, meetups, conferences, networking, cocktail parties, anywhere that your ideal clients or people who might know others who are like your ideal clients, anywhere that those people will be.

If you are an introvert like me, you might hate the idea of networking. I don't love networking, but I've started to think of it as an opportunity to make friends, and worst case, it's an opportunity to get out of the house and eat some free food. That's a great thing but I've actually met so many of my real-life friends at events like this.

And it didn't come from trying to network and work the room. It came from just genuinely talking to people and finding things we had in common and even if the people you are building relationships with aren't ever going to buy from you, or ever work with you, you never know what opportunities might present themselves in the future.

Some of my friends who I've met at events, we've done podcast interviews together. We've done cross-promotions and collaborations, all of those kinds of things. And, you know, business can be lonely at times as well and it's really nice to get away from your laptop screen and interact with real humans, not just in the virtual social media world.

 

#2: Ask your network. 

Ask your friends, your family, and your peers, ask them. This ideal client, whoever your ideal client is, to do whatever it is that you help them to do. Do you know anyone who needs this? I help X to do Y. Do you know anyone who needs this? Sometimes you really have to spell it out for them.

I know that about 90% of my non-business friends, wouldn't be able to tell you what I do aside from she has a podcast. Right? That's probably what they would tell you. So, if a friend of theirs has a problem that one of my offers could solve, my friend might not know. I might not know that I am actually able to help their friend with that problem.

And then also, if you have peers who have a similar ideal client to your business, but they offer different services, setting up reciprocal referral arrangements can be really helpful here where you're getting a percentage commission if you refer someone to them and they get a percentage commission if they refer someone to you.

 

#3: Ask your past clients. 

So, first of all, your past clients that you've already worked with, might have something else you can help them with, and you can work with them again. It's not always about bringing in new clients. Sometimes we can actually help our past clients even better, even deeper than if we're bringing in somebody new.

But also, your past clients may have friends who need your help, and they hadn't really thought about referring you to them. So, ask them, Hey, do you know anyone else that needs help with whatever you help them with? And if you wanted to, you could also set up some kind of referral program to incentivise them, but don't let the details of that stop you from simply asking, do you know anyone else that needs help with this? And if they refer somebody to you, send them a nice little thank you gift. That always goes well.

 

#4: Directly pitch your dream clients. 

You can send them an email or send them a DM but don't do it in a sleazy, icky salesy way instead do it in a way where you are leading with value.

So this is what I would do. Now, whatever you are doing, you likely solve a problem for your client and if you can identify how that problem is currently showing up for your dream clients and then explain how your solution would work in their particular case, this makes it much more likely to be a no brainer for them.

For example, if I was a website copywriter, I would find a dream client. I would look at their website and I would record a Loom video where I'm walking through their website copy and sharing what I think could be improved, explaining why I think it could be better, and then giving a brief example of what I would do differently and then I would send them that video. 

And in this case, they are still getting some value from me, even if they don't work with me, because now they know what could be improved on their website.

 

#5: Pitch relevant podcasts for an interview. 

Podcast interviews are very effective for building know-like and trust quickly. Getting your ideal clients to know you, like you, and trust you really quickly because you are in their ears for 45 minutes, sometimes an hour, sometimes longer, and by being on other people's podcasts as a guest, this has actually been one of the biggest ways that I have grown my own podcast, which in turn has grown my email list.

It's grown my social media audiences and it has led to more clients and more students in my courses. One interview that I did though, this one surprised me because usually somebody will listen to an interview with me and then they'll follow me or they'll be on my email list for a while or they'll listen to the show for a while before they buy something from me.

But one interview that I did last year actually led directly to two people signing up to work with me in a one-on-one high-ticket capacity directly from one interview. That is the power of being in somebody's ears for that amount of time. Yes, I know doing those first few interviews is going to feel scary, but after a while, you get used to it. You get comfortable being asked these questions and being behind a microphone and it starts to feel a bit more fun.

 

#6: Offer to teach a free workshop to a relevant community.

So similar to pitching podcasts, this one is also a really great way. For people to know you, like you, and trust you really quickly.

Chances are you have something of value that you can teach to a community and it might be a course community, a membership community. It might be a free community. The person who is running the community wants to deliver as much value as possible to their members. So if you can help them by delivering this value, teaching this value, it's going to be a win-win.

And then at the end of that free workshop, give the audience a way they can connect with you. Maybe you're giving them a freebie. Maybe you are asking them to connect with you and send you a DM on Instagram with their biggest aha moment. Maybe you just give them your email address and ask them to send you their aha moment. Whatever it is, you want to build that connection. You want to give them a call to action where they can continue to get more value from you and connect with you. 

 

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