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How Do I Get Customers Via The Internet? [Tips & Mistakes]

How Do I Get Customers Via The Internet? [Tips & Mistakes]

How do I get customers for my business? How do I recruit them online? Getting customers is easy when you know what you are doing. In this article you will find the biggest mistakes and the best tips for your creative endeavors to get more customers (via the internet).

Recruiting customers via the internet? There are really only 3 ways: this is how you do them …

There is no reason to be fooled by woolly terms and difficult theories about ‘online marketing strategies’. It just comes down to these three activities:

  1. Advertise with banners.
  2. Building your own audience through social media and / or a blog.
  3. Already established audience ‘borrow’ from other social media or blog channels. In fancy words this is called ‘opinion leader, ambassador, or influencer marketing.

If you want to get customers over the internet, you can get huge windfalls or you can be massively disappointed. The word ‘online marketing’ is also often made so woolly, vague and unnecessarily chic, while it is very simple.

That is why it is good to have clear for yourself the three ways to get customers via the internet . You need to know the following options and be aware of the long and short term effects of these methods.

Way 1: Advertise through the major ad platforms (this comes down to Google Adwords & Facebook ads)

recruiting customers online advertising

When talking about online advertising, 9 out of 10 times you talk about placing a banner via Adwords and / or Facebook. Just a banner ad. Easy.

The big advantage of this is that you can start a business today and have your first customers a few hours later if you use this method. So you don’t have to wait.

The ‘disadvantage’ of this is that you do not invest time, but money. This is actually not a disadvantage because you simply have to invest money if you also want a return on investment.

Method 2: Build an audience yourself with your own social media and / or a blog (you will only get customers later!)

recruiting customers creatively via facebook

You will not get customers tomorrow if you focus on building your own social media and / or blog. You will certainly get customers from this, but only in half a year. Do not apply this method exclusively if you want to gain new customers within six months.

Of course you can get new customers tomorrow with a single blog post or social media post, but that is when you email your blog article to a warm contact, which will affect him / she personally and take the decisive step to become a customer with you. turn into.

But be aware that you cannot expect to get new contacts if you spend a few months very intensively creating all kinds of messages for your Facebook page. This method can only lead to new contacts and customers over the long term, for example after six months,  who come into contact with you for the first time via your blog or social media.

Method 3: Deploy already established social media channels and blogs of others

acquire customers through bloggers

Maybe you are a follower of a major newsletter or social media channel. Maybe you follow some influencers yourself. Have you ever noticed that they promote their favorite coaches to their own audience?

There is really no reason to spend half a year building your own channels yourself when there are just gigantic channels waiting for you to use them.

Go to influencer market places. They show in their profile how many website visitors and / or social media reach they have. They also show how much they ask for a sponsored collaboration. You can also place an assignment yourself, so that the influencers have to pitch to you themselves.

This allows you to get creative to acquire customers. Find a nice match and come up with a fun sponsored message or a fun promotion together. For example, if you are a beauty salon, find a suitable beauty blogger and come up with fun promotions to get customers.

Is it that simple? And what about ‘funnels’ and ’email marketing’ and all that?

how to acquire customers online

You can make things difficult or you can make them easy. Of course you can get started with funnels and email marketing, but why would you do that if you already make tons of money because your ads immediately attract new customers?

Again, it’s awfully good with funnels and email marketing to work, but it is suitable for people warm to. That is a profession in itself. How to do this with a newsletter – and how to subsequently call those warm contacts, you can read at the bottom of this article about starting a coaching practice.

And this too I say again: you do not have to make it more complicated for yourself than what is necessary. You will read later in this article that you probably don’t even need a website and Facebook page …  That’s one of the biggest mistakes!

But to begin with, let’s look at the first of the four biggest mistakes …

How do I get customers? The 4 biggest mistakes I keep encountering …

How do I reach my customers? Let’s start with the four biggest mistakes I keep seeing when it comes to reaching and acquiring new customers. For this, the example of coaches is taken.

Error 1: You are one of the 1 million {enter, for example: coaches}

acquiring customers

In the Netherlands there are 1 million marketers, 1 million copywriters, 1 million coaches … But there are only a handful of customer journey marketers, hospitality copywriters or assertiveness coaches. Don’t be one of those million copywriters. Be that catering copywriter, the exam stress coach or the marketer who only consults about the customer journey!

Paradoxically, you get a lot easier and a lot more customers with this, while you would think that you would get fewer customers.  After all, you have to sell ‘no’ to a lot of potential customers who don’t own a hospitality business, if you’re a hospitality copywriter. This is an illusion. Break it and you will get a lot more business! Let’s show this with one more example …

The profession ‘coach’ does not exist. The following professions do exist: ‘stress coach, football coach, weight loss coach, burnout coach, etc.’ You may be afraid of missing out on other types of clients when your name is ‘stress coach’, so communicate that you are a ‘coach’. The effect of this is that no one wants to put money down for you. When I have stress complaints, I happily pay thousands of euros to a stress coach, but no way that I give that money to just any general coach. This is the first marketing class to be held in the lecture halls.

An example:

Is your ad headline “More time and peace of mind in your calendar?” That comes close: you already focus your coaching on time management. But for which select target group is this message intended? That’s where this message can be improved.

There are millions of people who would like to have more time and rest in their agenda. With that you want to appeal to millions of people, so you don’t really address anyone. So address a select group. Who has the money for it and could use it well? Career men, career women, aspiring career men, career women at the end of their career … Pick one and see how paradoxically you get more customers!

It is a huge mistake that occurs too often: not communicating clearly what your target audience is. You want and try to do way too many different things for way too many different people.

The consequence? Everything gets fragmented. You are not seen as an expert and authority at all. Nobody knows what you are doing exactly.

Mistake 2: You create a website and a Facebook page

how do I get customers

I see too many freelancers on their website and Facebook page … In the 4 years that my HBO marketing education lasted, I had maybe only 3 lessons about websites and one about Facebook. Are the marketing training hopelessly behind or is it perhaps the case that a website and Facebook are not necessary at all for most entrepreneurs?

Can you perhaps be open to the idea that a website does not help you as a freelancer? Could you imagine yourself as the product that other people can buy? And not only that. You yourself are also your sales tool. Not your site.

To do business you only need 2 things:
1: A product or a service.
2: A telephone.
– Eelco de Boer

You really only need a website and social media if you’re selling to the masses (freelancers don’t usually do that), and even then it’s really not necessary. Apple doesn’t do anything with Facebook, for example. They have created a page, but they never post anything on it. So choose the one thing with which you achieve a lot of results so that you do not lose time and energy. And often that one thing is just your phone and the smile on your face.

I really have no idea what many entrepreneurs are doing on social media. And they probably have no idea at all. And in the meantime, nobody buys.

Post some inspirational post after spending hours in Canva creating the perfect picture. Why? What’s the idea behind that? Couldn’t you have made 5 phone calls in the same time and landed a nice order of 3,000 euros?

Where is the focus?  Why are you going to podcast, blog and start a YouTube channel? 8 weeks of shredded energy later, you wonder why no one is buying … when you haven’t made one well-thought-out sales attempt. Again: why this flight behavior and where is the focus?

‘Well … I made all social media channels unsafe for no less than 8 weeks. Let me now announce that I have an event. Last chance: registration closes tomorrow. Sign In!’ Nothing sold …

What’s going wrong here? This is all hoping, fleeing and scattering your focus. Often the last thing you need is a website and a Facebook page … and you ‘just’ have to apply for assignments properly.

Mistake 3: Your rate is the same as a window cleaner

customer recruiting tips

The other day I was shocked when I spoke to one of the most skilled, warm and wise freelancers I know. Let’s call her Debby. She is a coach and at one point she said in astonishment: ‘Tom asks 150, – per hour for his coaching !!’ I replied, “Well, so you thought that was a low rate?” “No, very high!” And that statement shocked me me broken again!

Okay Debby, you guide someone for a year with a session of 150 euros every month. That’s 12 x 150 is 1,800. So you’ve completely changed someone’s life by setting an ambitious goal (in a year you can achieve gigantic goals), giving everything for that person for a year, all your knowledge and skills, all your energy, and in the end you keep only 1,800 left?

You transformed someone’s life and that’s only worth 1,800? The other person cannot even follow a training for 1,800, but now she has had full private guidance from you for a year for less! And then you dare to ask even half as little? The same price as a window cleaner (70.00 per hour)?

How much is it worth to someone to save you from a relationship? Or a teenager with drug problems? Or if you help someone apply for a top job? Priceless. 1,000 euros for an assignment is the minimum for a freelancer without experience who does not even know what he is doing .

If you know what you are doing: 5,000 euros for the assignment. Paid in advance, before you even think about taking the job. Even for the telephone conversation / intake interview. Even the worst freelancers get paid up front.

So there is no reason not to work with people who simply pay you and who appreciate your time. It’s okay if you then have to give them their money back on a no cure no pay basis, as long as they pay what your assignment is worth. You will get better clients, they will be happier with you and you will get better results (because they simply pay more), and they will also send references from similar clients who actually pay.

Get rid of the whole thing of “Let’s be nice to people, let’s offer discounts!” Pay the amount that actually belongs to a specialty, so that they start to appreciate what they take from you and really enjoy your services.

When someone who is interested (a suspect) asks, “How much does your coaching cost?” And you say, “500.00 an hour.” And the suspect says, “That’s expensive.” Then use the meta model : ‘Compared to what?’ ‘Piano lessons yes …’

If you don’t pay, you don’t pay attention.

In addition, understand the principle of abundance. You don’t need clients. You want clients who can make a change in the world, who want to do something with it and want results, to further improve the world.

Also understand the principle of ‘walk the talk’. You can discard this entire paragraph if you don’t have the credentials to request the above specialty amounts. Become a business coach? First, make sure you manage your own company to 6 figures, then you can easily sell annual trajectories of 500 converted per hour.

However, this should work out: normally you become a coach if you specialize in something. Stress coaches, tennis coaches, sales coaches, business coaches … They are never generalists. So this whole paragraph – if all goes well – just applies to you.

Mistake 4: You’re ‘stuck in the middle’ – Are you a blogger or are you a {coach}?

how-do-i-get-clients

Recruiting customers is sometimes just a matter of leaving a lot of things and knowing clearly what that one thing is that will bring you customers. For example, I see so many coaches with a blog with a handful of articles. There is nothing wrong with that, but make it clear what you are. As far as I am concerned, there are three options, and hardly anyone is clearly choosing one of them. I’ll explain why in a moment.

  1. This is the best option: don’t have a blog (and no website and no Facebook page). You are a freelancer with an offline profession . Being online only provides a distraction from your core business.
  2. Another option is to have a blog or social media channel where you express your feelings to a few people who read it. You write a personal, vulnerable and open article every now and then. The article will reach a few people, such as suspects, and there is a good chance that they will become a customer of you.
  3. Another option is to go all out with your blog or social media channel.  Post all your stories on your blog with hundreds of articles and hundreds of thousands of visitors that will make you choose the masses . For example, you even regularly receive calls from completely stranger clients.

Why doesn’t anyone choose one (!) Of these three options? Why does everyone want all three options at the same time? My observation is: most people are ‘stuck in the middle’. They are in between options 1 and 2, or between options 2 and 3.

They know somewhere that they are going to get their clients offline, but they spend all their focus on their website and Facebook page. Or they just focus on offline networks and in the meantime sometimes write a blog article, but are then surprised that they only see a few readers per month for this.

Whatever you do, communicate empathy … so about problems  of customers

Ultimately, the biggest mistake you can make is pretending everything is really happy and fun, while not showing empathy for your potential customer. It has a problem that needs to be solved. And you are needed for that. Show that you understand that problem! 

I wish you success with (online) customers!

These were all mistakes and tips for getting customers. Let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree with the errors and tips. Attracting good luck with customers! You will certainly succeed!

About The Author

Rubin

Hello! Thanks for reading these articles. My intention is to make happiness as simple and clear as posssible. By the way, excuse my English. I am not a native English speaker since I live in Amsterdam. Much appreciated if you use the comments to make suggestions on my grammar. See ya in another blogpost!

6 Comments

  1. Aletta

    Thanks for the clear explanation! I can certainly do something with that.
    Enjoy reading.
    Sincerely,
    Aletta

    • Rubin Alaie

      Thank you very much Aletta 🙂

  2. Hannahva

    hello Rubin,

    Enlightening piece about The focus and distinguish yourself!
    Thanks, can I really bring something!

    Hannah van den Berg
    See Your Life
    Mirror coaching

    “Where animal heart opens human heart”

  3. Anonymous

    Hi Rubin

    Clear story and very helpful for me. I don’t have much in the way of social media, so I don’t seem to need it. So put your story in listening to my feelings !!

    Thank you very much Linda

  4. John

    Hi,
    I have read your story and recognize myself in the errors you have indicated.
    In the meantime I have changed course and I am getting more brand awareness and offers.
    Thanks for your story.

    • Rubin Alaie

      Well done John.