The Germany Expat Business Show
A podcast that shares knowledge, stories and inspiration for anyone starting, running or growing a business as a non-German in Germany.
The Germany Expat Business Show
Mailbag: How Do I Get More Clients?
Like the show? Have a burning question? Send a text?
A subscriber to my newsletter asks the eternal question: How do I get more clients? I share my response.
Links mentioned in this episode:
4 Thrilling Things That Suddenly Happened When I Committed to a Niche
How to Find Clients Online with Enjoyment and Ease
How to Grow Your Business Online (newsletter)
You can find this episode and all episodes as well as show notes for each at https://thegermanylist.de/the-germany-expat-business-show-podcast/
Starting or running a business in Germany as a foreigner? Already running an online business in Germany as an expat? Wanting to grow your German-based business? Working as a freelancer in Germany? You'll love my guide with over 30 resources for expat business owners in Germany.
Hi, I'm Eleanor Meyerhofer, a native Californian designer and digital strategist. In October of 1999, a few years after graduating from design school, I flew from San Francisco to Munich with a fistful of Deutschmarks, a dial-up connection and an extremely vague plan. 20 plus years later, after a 10-year stint at a global agency, freelancing and launching two online businesses, I'm still here. Now I'm talking to other expat business owners to share knowledge, stories and inspiration for other non-Germans running businesses in Germany. Hey everyone, I'm going to start interspersing my regular interview episodes with short solo episodes where I share emails I've gotten from people that subscribe to my newsletter. I ask people what they're struggling with and I answer. I've reached out to some people that I had exchanges with and they said it was fine for me to share our exchanges. Today I'm starting with somebody named Sara Tekan. I'm sorry if I'm messing up your name there, sara. She's in Munich and here's what she wrote to me.
Speaker 1:I am a freelancing marketing professional with over 11 years of international experience. I love working with startups and brands to help grow their customer base through integrated marketing efforts. Branding is my forte. I also have hands-on experience in developing and executing campaigns across channels like social media, sea, email, in-app website events, seo and PR. I have a strong acumen for strategies focused on growth, accumulated with years of experience working with marketing agencies, internal stakeholders and leadership teams. I moved to Munich exactly two years ago and I have since then been undertaking different types of marketing gigs that come my way. The biggest challenge for me today is to find clients. I have one active project at the moment, but apart from that, it's been a struggle. Is this something that you can guide me on? Even if not, it would be great to hear from you. Thanks for your time. All right, so what I wrote back was hey, sara, thanks for signing up. You certainly have impressive marketing experience and skills. Finding clients is everybody's challenge. A lot of my clients come to me without struggle, but there are others that have enough clients but are just too busy to work on their marketing. Here are some things I found helpful Nitching, positioning and strategic networking. So I sent her a couple of links to post, which I'll also put on the show notes. So let me talk about each of these things Nishing, niching, whatever you want to say it. So I have a big post on this.
Speaker 1:I did kind of a pivot and niched maybe a year ago, focusing on surprise, surprise expat consultants in Germany. If nothing else, what this has made very easy for me is to narrow down my marketing efforts and not try to boil the ocean. And I have gotten clients not necessarily consultants or expats in Germany, but one woman is an expat in France and she said well, I hire you because I saw expat and I could relate. There is people smarter than me that have written a ton on this about just affinity groups and how speaking their language, even if the activity you do isn't that different, helps them kind of get to know, like and trust you and want to hire you. So if you can find a market like startups or startups in the vegan food industry or something like that, it's just gonna make your marketing a lot easier. So I'll link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 1:But again, the riches are in the niches, as I say. The other thing is strategic networking and this has been really helpful for me, and I've heard this called other things like finding businesses with complimentary services. So in my case, as a web designer, I often look for brand photographers and since my clients are all over Germany, it's really better to have them in different places in Germany. So when I find a photographer who I think has a great eye and good style and has at a professional level in Dusseldorf or Berlin or Stuttgart or wherever, I reach out to them and I have a whole section on my website where I have profiles and like a little directory, because we're gonna have the same kind of clients, same thing with native English copywriters, and this has already netted me like two projects for in 2023, last year. So find businesses that serve the same clients you do, but don't do exactly what you do, and build relationships with those people because you can refer work to each other.
Speaker 1:I also sent her a blog, a link to my blog, which is titled how to Find Clients Online with Enjoyment at Needs. I wrote this, I don't know, I think in 2022. And there's like I have 16 things here you can do. I'm gonna just list them off really quickly. So none of these are revolutionary and I'm sure you've heard this before, but sometimes it's just helpful to think about the things you can do so you can email all your friends and family, let everyone know about your new business and your new offers and what you're doing, and I don't think you should reach out to people you haven't talked to in a long time, because that's just kind of rude. You can start a blog.
Speaker 1:Now a lot of people are gonna say don't do this, and I would say don't do this if you don't like doing this kind of thing. The old advice used to be do a blog for SEO and in some cases I think that could be a good strategy if you do have a niche or you are providing locally based services. But I like blogging because I can send posts to clients or leads to explain things I do and sometimes just telling your own story like I just booked a project, a big project with a client who was really apprehensive and had been burning through a lot of designers and have a couple posts about projects that were difficult, about perfectionism, and I'm very honest and straightforward and genuine in these posts and it kind of shows the kind of person I am and my approach to project work and people book based on these. I've had people book on, like the story of how I quit my corporate day job. So having your story, your approach to work, what you do, project highlights in some kind of format that's online, that's on a digital property like your website that you own, is a great way to do sales Okay.
Speaker 1:So go to online networking groups. I used to go. Covid was actually really good for this. I used to go to one that was in Rotterdam. There was a group out of London that had a speed networking thing on Mondays. I've since stopped going to those because I really wanna focus on clients in Germany, but they were great. They were great way to get in touch with other people and again find those strategic partners, complimentary businesses. Go to in-person networking events. Nothing revolutionary here, but you just gotta show up and be out there.
Speaker 1:Learn SEO Again. I think SEO is great if you have a local business, like if I'll just do some client examples if you're a local magician and you do kid's birthday parties or trade events or a midwife. I had a client that was a midwife in the UK. People look for those kinds of services online, but I don't know if that would be in Sara's case. I don't know if I would go with SEO and she already knows about it, so she can figure that out on her own.
Speaker 1:If that's the right strategy, figure out where your ideal customer is online and hang out there regularly, answer questions when you can. I think you've probably heard this advice too, so this shouldn't be inauthentic. You know, you may know me from several Facebook groups that are in Germany or Munich and I like to be in those groups because those are my people. But every now and then somebody has a question and again, if I have a blog post that answers it and it's appropriate, I will share that link. And I've been in there so much that sometimes I mean I actually haven't been in there so much lately, but I am active, relatively active in those groups. So now, lots of times when people say, does anybody know a web designer, people will tag me right away. So that's another way to network is on those online spaces, and when people do have questions, I do answer them when I can.
Speaker 1:If there are podcasts that target your niche market, then get on them, interview with them, create a talk and find places to give it. So if you create some kind of presentation on something you're knowledgeable about, like marketing, a lot of people would love to know about PR and SEO and all the things you're doing make a presentation and give it somewhere. So here's the story. I just talked to a potential client and she's in Florida and I said you know, where did you hear about me? And I gave a Creative Mornings field trip talk on. I think it was like I have a talk called like six steps to nail your website launch or something like this.
Speaker 1:I gave that talk two years ago, so you never know where these things are gonna lead. You just gotta keep planting seeds. You can ask former clients for referrals, create case studies these are also really helpful for sales. You can just, you know, talk about what problem the client came to you with, what you did and what the result was. You can also show up regularly, multiple times a week, on a platform you enjoy and provide valuable content. So that's just a visibility.
Speaker 1:And I'm always on LinkedIn. I do get 20 to 30% of my business from LinkedIn and it's just cause I'm on there all the time, not just posting content and networking and interacting and engaging with other people. One client I had last November she found me cause I commented on some post of somebody she was following. So you never know where these things lead. Again, nothing super revolutionary in there, but I would just. If there's three things, two to three things in there that sound like, okay, these are things I wouldn't mind doing, then you can double down, triple down and do those things.
Speaker 1:Lastly, I would just say on this, a big kind of aha moment for me which is kind of simple, but it took me a while to really have this sink in Was that there's a difference between marketing and sales. So marketing is something you have to do all the time, like showing up on LinkedIn or whatever it is you're gonna do, or sending a newsletter. It's just something you have to do, rain or shine, consistently. Sales is like hunting. So if marketing is gardening, like planting seeds and waiting for them to bloom, sales is like reaching out, outreach or outbound marketing. That's where you keep in touch with your past clients. You find people and do things like hold outreach, even if it's not always comfortable. I am talking to one client now and it'd be a big project and I saw their post on LinkedIn. It's a not-for-profit. They need a big relaunch and I said I saw your post, I'm reaching out, I sought that opportunity and I pitched for it, and so a lot of it is just not being passive about waiting for opportunities to come to you.
Speaker 1:I hope you found this useful and if you would like me to answer your question, either in email or on the air, with your permission, of course. Go to my site, ellonormyohoffercom, and in the footer menu there is a link that says grow your business online and if you click on there you will get to my newsletter sign up page. I'll also include this link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. You can find this episode and all other episodes of the Germany X-PAT business show at my website at wwwellonormyohoffercom slash podcast. That's wwwellonormyohoffercom slash podcast.