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Trying to get started freelancing - Google Ads / Web Design

Black_Dragon43

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Listen to @Andy Black @mavdm22. He has been very patient with you and has tried to help you see for yourself that the problem isn’t the service.

A lot of young people these days get their minds poisoned by gurus who tell them they can just open an email account, send emails to strangers or get a phone number and cold call strangers and get thousands of dollars in sales.

The reality is that it takes multiple touches in most cases to get someone to buy. We don’t live 10-15 years ago anymore.

People will check you out. They’ll check out your profiles on social media. They’ll check out your website. They’ll check out for how long you’ve been in business. And all these factors go into creating your credibility.

Today it’s harder to “trick” someone to buy what you have. Much harder.

If you reach out cold to a stranger, and you have a basic website and pretty much a naked LinkedIn profile with little to no content, no case studies, no testimonials, do you think you will be seen as a respectable business in thier eyes?

The correct answer is you won’t be. What you really need to do is start building relationships. Post content. Engage with people. Provide value. Start conversations. Get on discovery calls with people (not calls where you pitch them, just calls where you learn more about them and IF what you have can help, then you can invite them on another follow-up call to discuss it).

You can’t sell anything with 0 trust and 0 credibility, because no matter WHAT you say, people won’t BELIEVE you. You can say the most wonderful words in existence - it won’t help!

So I suggest you do focus on inbound. Even your outreach on social media should be angled towards building relationships FIRST, before selling. And the content you post will add to your credibility over time. The fact someone sees your post every day, for 90+ days will change the way they see you. By the end of those 90+ days you’ll be an expert in their minds.

In addition to that I suggest you join BNI. You can try a local chapter or even go for an online chapter from the US/UK. Get to know the people there, chat with them, make friends. You’ll get a lot of business in a little while if you do that.
 

Andy Black

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These threads might help:

I also did a call in @Fox 's paid group where I discussed getting started selling Google Ads as a Service. That recording is in his paid membership. It's also in my own paid membership.

Basically, Start by saying Yes to everything, Scale by saying No to everything. As @Fox said, don't niche down yet. Go get your first client, free or low paying it doesn't matter. Then figure it out as you go along.
 

Johnny boy

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freelancing is for retards.

How much does it cost to get a logo from a retard freelancer?

$40?

How much does it costs to get a logo from a company like electricpen.com

Likely $4000 or something in that ballpark.

What's the difference? It's just a company with a web domain offering a service. But they position themselves as experts while freelancers are cheap and commoditized.

Start a company, stop freelancing like a broke retard.
 

Andy Black

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People will check you out. They’ll check out your profiles on social media. They’ll check out your website. They’ll check out for how long you’ve been in business. And all these factors go into creating your credibility.
^^^ This.

If someone messages me on LinkedIn or Facebook and we take it to email then I use email address andy@andyblack.net

They'll check out AndyBlack.net where they can follow their nose and look over my LinkedIn profile, YouTube channel, and articles I've written in this forum.

I make it easy for them to check me out.

I don't do "content marketing". I don't really get leads from the content I publish. I get referrals from building relationships. Those referrals do their due diligence and check out my content before or after they reach out to me.

That's how some small YouTube channels with barely any videos and only a few hundred views can generate lots of business ... they're not "content marketing", they're making it easy for people to check them out.

For those just starting out I suggest going through the Inbound/Sales thread in my signature.
 
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Fox

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Hello All,

Hope you are well.

So basically as the thread title stated i am trying to get myself started with Google Ads ( got my Google Certification and also ran my own ecom ads a few years ago) and Web Design. Focusing on lead generation. I have spent time learning Google Ads and web design (wordpress) so i have good theory and now i am looking to get more practical experience.

I prefer Google Ads because i believe it's more performance based and revenue driven marketing. No offence to other platforms but personally i find it easier to target customers.

This is what i have done so far;

Picked a niche - I decided that i would help paving contractors in the UK
Setup a website
Setup domain for outreach.

As of now i have sent around 200 emails to potential clients. This is what i have tried;

Sending out SEO audits - no response
Sending out Reputation Management audits - no response
Sending out Google Business Profile audits - no response
Sending out hand raisers - asking if they can take on more homeowners - here i have had responses but then ghosted once i explained what i did. To be honest here i was too comfortable sending these.
Sending out free work in exchange for testimonial - up until now also no response

So, either my niche is wrong, my targeting is wrong, my approach is wrong or something else that i am not aware of is wrong! or is it simply a case of not contacting enough people?

I was wondering if anyone could shed some light here for me?

Thank you

I recommend getting a few results first before doing cold outreach - having some wins will help get a much better response from people. So find some businesses you can help for now (using the connections you already have) and get a project or two done.

Also, be open to what niches you help. Niching down should be because you have experience and can see where it is best applied. There isn't much advantage to niching down at the very start - cast a wide net and just get going with whoever looks suitable.
 

Stargazer

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Something for you to think about.

A shop nearby sells mobility scooters and things aimed at disabled, elderly.

The manager showed me her email inbox and spam folders. Literally hundreds of emails. She had nearly 140 unread emails in her inbox alone.

FREE Help with SEO, websites, Council Tax, VAT Refunds, Utilities and on and on. You get the drift. Not all but amassive chunk of them. The rest were obvious scams.

Have a guess what the local newspaper Advertising Reps do? They walk in. Name to a face. And they drop by once a week until they get a sale and once they get a sale they still drop by once a week.

Dan
 

Fox

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I am curious in regards to why people won't even reply in regards to free work as mentioned? In my eyes (it's possible I'm missing something) it's a win win. They wouldnt lose money or time and in exchange for a testimonial which anyone can write in 5 minutes. I dont understand the resistance.

The price is only one point of resistance - and usually not the main one.

There is also time, effort, risk, perceived value, priorities, and distractions.

To sell you got to be able to cut through the noise and land on real pain points that matter and are urgent.

So "selling" for free still means you got to be able to sell - but once you get it, the good news is it isn't hard to start actually changing good money quickly afterward.
 
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Andy Black

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Inbound would be based around teaching eg structure, settings, landing pages, tracking etc. i presume that was what you were referring to.
Inbound doesn't have to be based around teaching. I feel that if you teach people how to do stuff then you're likely build an audience of people who want to do what you do. Which is OK if that's your market. Less so if it's not.

My advice:

Help people, in public.

You don't even have to help people with the service you provide.

Think of what I do for example. How many of my 15,000+ posts in this forum are about Google Ads?

I'm a community member first, welcoming newbies and pointing them in the right direction till they find their feet, joining in discussions about ChatGPT or whatever.

It brings me business, but not how you probably think.

1) Forum members sometimes refer people they meet in their travels to me. "You're having trouble with your Google Ads? Oh, I know a guy..."

2) More importantly, I make friends, build relationships, and create win-wins with forum members and people they introduce me to. I end up in lots of PMs. Many end up on Zoom where I love getting to know people and help in any way I can. I braindump whatever i think can help them my thoughts and it mostly isn't about Google Ads.

I'm seen as helpful and someone they could refer folks to without worrying those folks will be hard sold or have a bad time. And I just repeat the cycle of making friends, building relationships, and creating win-wins.

Is this inbound? I don't know and don't think it matters what label's put on it. What I don't do is PM people out of the blue though. I only PM people who follow me, and then it's just to say Thanks and ask how they're doing.


Maybe work through the series of short videos I posted to YouTube last year. Here's some:

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/xYEEhRyF1qA?feature=share

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/iaVpqiUETl8?feature=share


View: https://youtube.com/shorts/ZuvJ7HWhU2c?feature=share
 

Andy Black

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The beauty of providing Google Ads as a service is that clients are already paying monthly for the Google Ads. It's logical (even preferrable) for them to pay a monthly fee to a freelancer or agency to manage their campaigns.

Another beauty of Google Ads is they can be very consistent when dialled in (note the two highlighted words... you can't always dial it in, and you can't always make it consistent).

So you can get campaigns setup, as a freelancer, that pay you $500/mth and run for years with barely any changes on your part except to update ads as Google introduces new features, and/or create/pause campaigns at the request of clients.

Get 10-20x $500/mth clients where the MRR is low maintenance.

I've 10x $500/mth clients in just one niche. There's just me who sets up campaigns and I have a freelancer who creates landing pages and sets up conversion tracking. Oh, and my 14 year old son sends the weekly reports for each client on Monday morning.

How could I scale as a freelancer?
  • I could get 10 more of those clients in that niche.
  • Those clients may want to sell other services and need more pages and campaigns, potentially going to $1,000/mth or $1,500/mth.
  • IF I go that route I'd create SOPs and train my son to manage campaigns while I setup new ones. Then I'd train him to setup new ones.
  • Then I'd train our 12 year old up to do the reports.
  • So now I'm building out a productised service, possibly with a low/intermediate skilled team.
  • Or you could call it an agency, but whatever.

I get the occasional $6k/mth consulting client, and many levels in between.
  • I'm still a practitioner. I could do higher priced consulting work, but choose not to if I can.
  • Being still at the coal-face I can train others to do what I do (not just the technical side, but also acquiring clients and managing projects).
  • So I'm able to spot something dumb in an account today and knock out a quick video in half an hour (here's today's video). Good luck doing that if you're not still a practitioner at the coal-face.
And while I'm figuring out YouTube, do you think Google Ads clients might be interested in YouTube Ads? YouTube Ads are a subset of Google Ads anyway.

Lots of ways to skin a cat.

Check out my tagline in my avatar:
Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
Start. Sell. Scale.

Get started by helping people.
Figure out how to get paid (sell).
THEN figure out how to scale.

MJ has a great video about it here:
 
G

GuestUser4aMPs1

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So, either my niche is wrong, my targeting is wrong, my approach is wrong or something else that i am not aware of is wrong! or is it simply a case of not contacting enough people?

You don't have an angle.

Let me ask, what's the more compelling sell?

A: "Hey, I'm ____ and do SEO PPC FFS XYZ Marketing. Hire me."

or...

B: "Hey, I've generated X leads for you. They want to hire you NOW. Just pay me a % for the referral."

Obviously B. You're practically selling money to your customers.

@MJ DeMarco did a great demonstration at the Fastlane Summit a few years ago. He stood up in front of the audience and asked "I'm looking for a $10 bill. I'll pay you $100 for it. Any takers?"

When you're speaking to potential customers, your value needs to feel like you're selling $100 bills for $10. If it's not, you have some real work to do. Please keep in mind that there's a million other marketers out there...What's your angle? How will you compete?
get a list and send out 50,000 emails not 200.

Agreed but be sure your copy is airtight before scaling send volume.

No sense in doing that if it goes to spam.

@mavdm22 I'm in your industry (lead generation) and sincerely believe you want to succeed. There's a lot I've written prior that'll come in handy. I highly suggest you dive in and read from start to finish:

 

Black_Dragon43

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When you mentioned "online chapter from the US/UK" Could you explain that part please? Just the correct name so that i can look it up.
Sure, it’s referring to an online chapter of BNI, the networking organisation: Home

It’s a good way to get to know other business people, build some relationships and get some referrals. Like all things, it’s what you make of it through the effort you put in!
 
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4gus

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I can understand, because I'm almost at the same situation. Staying in one country while trying to target another country.
I'm also just learning about google ads, I got the certification but I only know the theory, less real world practice.
I also joined in facebook groups for business owners, lots of groups out there and I saw some posts offering free websites, help with ads etc etc. Didn't see much response for their ads, maybe because it was buried under 10 other scammer posts lol. Local businesses are also hesitant because of various reasons that's already mentioned in this post.

So to get real world experience, I signed up for volunteering. I'm sure there are volunteer websites in UK where some nonprofits are looking for people to help them run their google ads or FB ads. I signed up with one of the websites. Google has $10k/ month grant for non-profit to spend in google ads.

Most of non-profits don't have people or knowledge to do that. I contacted 2, told them I got the ads experience plus the certificate (just so my email sounds a bit convincing lol) and I got response from both of them. I got hired from one and last week I started to run a google ads campaign for real.
I know I didn't get a penny from that, but for me the experience is worth more, it'll help build the confidence. I still have lots to learn and I'll start with @Andy Black 's signature. Thanks Andy! :)

Gus
 
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Johnny boy

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get a list and send out 50,000 emails not 200.

Like starting a lawn care company and cutting grass with scissors
 
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mavdm22

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Small businesses don't want to read audits after a hard days work.

Would you?

Dan
Hi Dan,

No I wouldn't and I completely agree with your comment. That was the primary reason why I moved away from sending audits and local SEO as my core service offering, and moved to something that would provide results in a quicker timeframe and decided on offering Google Ads.

Local SEO is still needed but it's a long term strategy.

I appreciate your comment and welcome any other ideas you may have.

Thank you
 
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Did you try upwork ?

It’s very competitive but when you have you foot in the door it should go easier.

Also when you speak a non English language you have a little edge.
Than you can tagest these jobs.


Did you try cold calling ?
When you do that you can simply ask „why don’t you want xyz“ and you get straight a answer.

When you call a bunch of the same business / niche and they give you all the same answer.
That’s a clear indication of the current „market“ situation.

Try to make lead gen for pest control in German. I called a few of them and all said straight no.

One was so friendly and explains to me that the pest control community don’t like lead gen company’s.
Most of them operate with scammers which is simply unethical.
Also most of them don’ took any new clients.
 
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mavdm22

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These threads might help:

I also did a call in @Fox 's paid group where I discussed getting started selling Google Ads as a Service. That recording is in his paid membership. It's also in my own paid membership.

Basically, Start by saying Yes to everything, Scale by saying No to everything. As @Fox said, don't niche down yet. Go get your first client, free or low paying it doesn't matter. Then figure it out as you go along.
Hi Andy,

Thank you for your reply.

I have actually read a few posts from you. I know you started by helping your electrician friend when the coupon fell out of the book.

One of the things you have always said is that you don't do outreach. You said to build relationships and help people.

Whilst I have been doing my outreach I have been helping people ( this last week) so far i have a call scheduled next week with someone in Florida and currently helping someone from San Diego. Not exactly my niche but taking into consideration what you and fox said.

Also in the process of setting up a partnership with a web dev who is looking for Google ads.

Thank you for providing the links to the threads. I'm going to explore what you suggested.
 
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Andy Black

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Sorry, feck cold emailing and cold calling.

"Who already has your clients?"
(Jay Abraham)

I get sooo much of my work from businesss who want to offer Google Ads services to their clients.

All you need is one business that has multiple clients who you can build a win-win-win with.

Before that happens you need ONE client and to get some skin in the game. Have you asked everyone in your network if they know anyone who wants help with Google Ads?
 
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GuestUser4aMPs1

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Or setup a site, pay for ads and then forward them to clients.?
Correct. Demonstrate that your system works, and ask for a referral fee.

After you've developed a reputation of delivering results, only then can you go for a monthly contract.

At this point nobody wants to listen to you because nobody knows or trusts you.

Fix that. Prove yourself first.
 

Andy Black

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No bits from personal network.
To be honest Andy, i am not in my targeted country. Basically long story short and i think i may have mentioned this. I'm Portuguese but after my parents split up i moved to England (North West) with my dad when i was 7. Came back to Portugal to do my military service which was compulsory and no longer. Met my now ex wife (together 16 yrs) and have two children. I don't want to leave my children. I have a 15 yr son and a 4 yr old daughter. I'm basically stuck here if i want to see my children. Which i obviously do. I'm sure you understand as you too mentioned that you too are a father. (This is my explaining the lack of contacts)

You may say, Why don't you do this in Portugal. Because even though i am Portuguese. My mother tongue is English. I prefer English and to be honest i don't think i can do the ads or landing page in Portuguese. I lived in Lisbon after military service and worked In an... hold... wait for it... English company! :)

I'm in a rural part of central Portugal. In regards to meeting people. I know that there a few older couples here from England, came to live their retirement, possibly Ireland. Not sure exactly, i know they are from the UK. I thought about asking them if they have any connections in England or UK. Which after your post above. That's what i am going to do.

Side note, i am also part of an English group on facebook (my county) where they ask questions about living in Portugal. People who already live here. I am going to see if i can speak to them also.

No not jumped on any zoom calls or attended any business meetings.

"i do them little ads on google " hahaha

So again, thank you. I appreciate the time you have taken to post.
Cool. If there's not much happening locally then hop into Facebook groups and forums where you're a peer and start making friends/connections. Exactly like you're doing in this forum.

What I mean by peers is, don't join groups of tradesmen when you're not a tradesman. Maybe join groups of budding SEOs, web developers, or people who use xyz tool you also use.

Focus on being a helpful, supportive, and engaged member. Tell people what you're trying to do and get and give advice. (So exactly as you're doing in the forum.)

Answer questions on any topic.

Also answer questions related to the type of work you want to do. If someone has a question about Google Ads then research it and reply.

People will notice that you are or want to be a Google Ads guy.

End up in PMs helping people, naturally.

End up on Zoom calls helping people, naturally.

You're NOT trying to turn them into clients.

You're just trying to help people with Google Ads, and ideally be *seen* helping people with Google Ads.

People will start referring you to other people, and referring people to you.

I'll emphasise again that your mindset is to be helpful, not to look for clients.

You can of course pop into groups of business owners and offer to setup Google Ads campaigns for them. And that can work. But what if you were invited into a group by the owner and they introduced you as a Google Ads guy who will do a free workshop or answer questions? I've been invited into loads of groups because I'm seen as helpful, supportive, engaged, and a subject matter expert who can bring value to a group.

Obviously there's other ways to get started, and maybe faster. The beauty of helping people first in groups where you're a peer is you don't have to try selling to anyone. Referrals will come to you and you can figure out sales as you go along, all while making friends, building relationships, and creating win-wins.

I believe that chat with Sonny is about this.

PS: You're already doing it in this forum.

Also check out "Who have you helped?" in my signature.
 

Andy Black

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people who cant prove what they are talking about are technically liars.
Hmm. Can't prove what? I'm figuring out TikTok at the moment. I've only uploaded 4 videos. If I told you I'd warched some workshop recordings that told me videos should be 12-15s unless it's a tutorial then would I be a liar because I can't prove it?

Seems like you lack confidence. What can give you the confidence? If it's working for free helping someone for a while then do that. If it's taking courses and getting certified then do that. If it's running ads with your own money and landing pages then do that.

Personally, I'm confident in my ability to figure stuff out, and not lie if I don't know.

I really cannot see any business owner thinking yes this is the guy I want to run my ads for me.
I can't either, but that's not a skillset or experience thing. People want to hire problem solvers. Do you believe you can solve a problem you encounter? Will you roll up your sleeves, get stuck in, and figure it out?

Just received a message from him stating that he got two calls today. So at least he is happy which was the original intention anyway.
Sounds like you helped someone?
 
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The benefit of offering Google Ads as a service is that clients already pay for Google Ads on a regular basis. It makes sense (if not preferable) for them to pay a monthly fee to a freelancer or agency to manage their marketing.

Another advantage of Google Ads is that when dialled in, they can be quite consistent (notice the two highlighted words... you can't always dial it in, and you can't always make it constant).

So, as a freelancer, you can build up campaigns that pay you $500 per month and continue for years with no effort on your side other than updating advertisements when Google provides new capabilities and/or creating/pause campaigns at the request of clients.
Hi Riley,

Yep completely agree with you. Started to get responses to my outreach and had my first sales call this week.

Possibly went a bit too far with the management fee and it was considerably lower than the one you mentioned above.

He said he would come back to me but I think we all know what that means.

Live and learn as they say.

At the end of the day going from not getting any replies to first sales call, I would say that I am more or less on the right track!

Thanks for the comment. I appreciate it.
 

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For starters, ask that guy you helped for a testimonial!

He can, of course, refuse, but it's the least he can do after you gave him your time for free and "literally drew up a landing page" for him. Odds are he'll have no problem doing that if he really ran with all your advice. Stack a few more of these testimonials up to use in your proposals, show as "proof," and paste on your website and suddenly you've got at least a little bit of cred to lean on.

Not enough to put you in the big leagues but enough to help you get some other "starter clients."

That's good you're starting to get some sales calls even if you're getting turned down. You'll get better as you do more of them, gain confidence and feel more comfortable. So keep "practicing" those calls and get better at them. Sooner or later something will give.

I would advise against pitching prices too low, though...

1) Low rates can inadvertently make you look bad (cheap) and make your lack of experience stand out if you're charging less than all the other guys. I'm not saying charge top dollar, but charging a somewhat professional rate will make you look more like a professional.

2) Getting real rates when you DO land some clients will make up for all the ones who said no and make all the failures worthwhile. The great thing about prospecting when you offer ongoing services (at reasonably substantial rates) is that it only takes closing 2 or 3 deals and suddenly you're talking about a full-time income that can replace a day-job, give you some ground to stand on, and remove the desperation that inevitably shines through when you're prospecting from a broke state of mind. On the other hand, if you land a couple clients at bottom dollar rates, you're still stuck in a position where you feel like you haven't quite made it and are throwing anything at the wall to hope another five or so say "yes" just to bring in a little more cash.
 
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WillHurtDontCare

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I don't know if someone else already said this, but you could probably get some clients by just offering to improve their page load speed.

Having a good product and good copy won't matter if your customer leaves your site before the content loads.

You could use Google's page speed index API to get the page speeds for hundreds / thousands of websites, then reach out to them saying that you can increase their conversions by improving their slow page speed.


FdEikBtakAARBgx


bounce-rate-statistics.png


 

mavdm22

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Listen to @Andy Black @mavdm22. He has been very patient with you and has tried to help you see for yourself that the problem isn’t the service.

A lot of young people these days get their minds poisoned by gurus who tell them they can just open an email account, send emails to strangers or get a phone number and cold call strangers and get thousands of dollars in sales.

The reality is that it takes multiple touches in most cases to get someone to buy. We don’t live 10-15 years ago anymore.

People will check you out. They’ll check out your profiles on social media. They’ll check out your website. They’ll check out for how long you’ve been in business. And all these factors go into creating your credibility.

Today it’s harder to “trick” someone to buy what you have. Much harder.

If you reach out cold to a stranger, and you have a basic website and pretty much a naked LinkedIn profile with little to no content, no case studies, no testimonials, do you think you will be seen as a respectable business in thier eyes?

The correct answer is you won’t be. What you really need to do is start building relationships. Post content. Engage with people. Provide value. Start conversations. Get on discovery calls with people (not calls where you pitch them, just calls where you learn more about them and IF what you have can help, then you can invite them on another follow-up call to discuss it).

You can’t sell anything with 0 trust and 0 credibility, because no matter WHAT you say, people won’t BELIEVE you. You can say the most wonderful words in existence - it won’t help!

So I suggest you do focus on inbound. Even your outreach on social media should be angled towards building relationships FIRST, before selling. And the content you post will add to your credibility over time. The fact someone sees your post every day, for 90+ days will change the way they see you. By the end of those 90+ days you’ll be an expert in their minds.

In addition to that I suggest you join BNI. You can try a local chapter or even go for an online chapter from the US/UK. Get to know the people there, chat with them, make friends. You’ll get a lot of business in a little while if you do that.
Hi, Hope you are well.

I get to the end of your post and all i can think is he's right. I had a basic website with only the service and nothing else. Literally nothing else, Not even a Facebook page.

I have engaged with many people and provided value to them and never heard from them again. Which is fine, i'm just picking things from your post where i have been active but for 90% of what you said i have not done. Inbound was what i was planning to do once i got the ball rolling.

I'm just confused. Outbound doesn't work because of the things you mentioned (case studies, testimonials) Inbound would be based around teaching eg structure, settings, landing pages, tracking etc. i presume that was what you were referring to.

When you mentioned "online chapter from the US/UK" Could you explain that part please? Just the correct name so that i can look it up.

Thanks for your insights. I appreciate it.
 

mavdm22

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Hello All,

Hope you are well.

So basically as the thread title stated i am trying to get myself started with Google Ads ( got my Google Certification and also ran my own ecom ads a few years ago) and Web Design. Focusing on lead generation. I have spent time learning Google Ads and web design (wordpress) so i have good theory and now i am looking to get more practical experience.

I prefer Google Ads because i believe it's more performance based and revenue driven marketing. No offence to other platforms but personally i find it easier to target customers.

This is what i have done so far;

Picked a niche - I decided that i would help paving contractors in the UK
Setup a website
Setup domain for outreach.

As of now i have sent around 200 emails to potential clients. This is what i have tried;

Sending out SEO audits - no response
Sending out Reputation Management audits - no response
Sending out Google Business Profile audits - no response
Sending out hand raisers - asking if they can take on more homeowners - here i have had responses but then ghosted once i explained what i did. To be honest here i was too comfortable sending these.
Sending out free work in exchange for testimonial - up until now also no response

So, either my niche is wrong, my targeting is wrong, my approach is wrong or something else that i am not aware of is wrong! or is it simply a case of not contacting enough people?

I was wondering if anyone could shed some light here for me?

Thank you
 
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mavdm22

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Something for you to think about.

A shop nearby sells mobility scooters and things aimed at disabled, elderly.

The manager showed me her email inbox and spam folders. Literally hundreds of emails. She had nearly 140 unread emails in her inbox alone.

FREE Help with SEO, websites, Council Tax, VAT Refunds, Utilities and on and on. You get the drift. Not all but amassive chunk of them. The rest were obvious scams.

Have a guess what the local newspaper Advertising Reps do? They walk in. Name to a face. And they drop by once a week until they get a sale and once they get a sale they still drop by once a week.

Dan
Hi Dan,

I understand your message loud and clear.
Basically call in and continue to call in and moral of the story, meet face to face.
The only problem with that is that i am not in my targeted country. Long story short, born in one country, moved to and grew up in targeted country and moved back to country of birth. Now separated with children it's not an option to move. And to complicate things just a little bit more, i'm in a rural part of my country of birth.

You might say, why don't you do what you want in the country you are now, and my answer would be that i am more comfortable in the language where i grew up.

If this wasn't the situation, then calling in would be no problem and i would most likely see results quicker.

Not making excuses, just trying to explain that i again, great points, but not something that i can do if you know what i mean.

Again, thank you for your insight, much appreciated
 

mavdm22

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The price is only one point of resistance - and usually not the main one.

There is also time, effort, risk, perceived value, priorities, and distractions.

To sell you got to be able to cut through the noise and land on real pain points that matter and are urgent.

So "selling" for free still means you got to be able to sell - but once you get it, the good news is it isn't hard to start actually changing good money quickly afterward.
Hi Fox,

Ok now i understand the resistance.
To be honest here, i only looked at and communicated the price aspect of my free offer. There was nothing in regards to the other points you mentioned. If the company isn't aware of the other aspects of how a website could benefit them (it was a one page wp site with a big banner in the middle and a phone number and email address) then in their eyes they may not know why they would need a website. I'm obviously speculating, it could be other things as well.

Basically i understand what you mean and appreciate your reply.

Thank you
 

mavdm22

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Did you try upwork ?

It’s very competitive but when you have you foot in the door it should go easier.

Also when you speak a non English language you have a little edge.
Than you can tagest these jobs.


Did you try cold calling ?
When you do that you can simply ask „why don’t you want xyz“ and you get straight a answer.

When you call a bunch of the same business / niche and they give you all the same answer.
That’s a clear indication of the current „market“ situation.

Try to make lead gen for pest control in German. I called a few of them and all said straight no.

One was so friendly and explains to me that the pest control community don’t like lead gen company’s.
Most of them operate with scammers which is simply unethical.
Also most of them don’ took any new clients.

Hi Mister,

Hope you are well and thank you for your comment.

No, i have not tried upwork. I have only tried cold email using the different strategies above in my original post. The other language that I speak is Portuguese and I'm in Portugal.

Cold calling
I spoke to two who requested that I call. One was not in a position to invest, provided him with some basic information to point him in the direction which would benefit him most at his stage. The other I called, was busy, asked for a call back and then didn't answer.

I also agree with you in regards to cold calling. It's not a problem for me to call but I avoid it on the basis that I presume they are busy, I would rather call when the potential clients are expecting my call.

In regards to calling and checking the market, maybe I could call those who have opened my emails a fee times. I have those tracked and get opened more than once. What do you or others think?

Just out of curiosity when you called the pest control company did they say anything specific regarding lead gens? Did they explain what was it that was unethical?

Thanks again
 

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