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How do I find clients without cold calling, email blasting, or other annoying tactics?

What is the best way to generate qualified leads, or preferably, just have prospects call me first? I am a web application developer and IT consultant, so advertising in this highly undifferentiated market is likely a waste of time, effort, and money. Relying on SEO/SEM is also wasteful for the same reasons, in my opinion. I'll do *some* SEO, but I don't think it's they key to any marketing strategy; it's just one tool.

Generally, the only way to compete in a relatively undifferentiated market (pure competition) is to compete on price. However, I am not interested in bottomfeeding. I provide high value, high ROI, and high cost personalized service.

Any other ideas?

7 Responses

  • Dec 02, 2009

    President

    I don't have any good suggestions but I share in you attitudes. I'm so tired of all the junk mail I get; I started feeding it, unopened, to my worms. I disconnected my phone. And I have the best spam software I can find.

    All my work comes via word of mouth. I've been consulting for 20+ years and to this day, my advertising has yielded me, at best, two customers.

    Can you find a high profile account that you could do for free? And then leverage off of the good will and the publicity that creates. e.g. if you did a web site for AmEx with "Web site by Empire Software, Inc." at the bottom, I bet that would get noticed.

    The other thing I do is a lot of free, quickie, things like help people on forums, answer mailing lists, etc. I've never done this with a conscious hope that it will gain me anything but I still believe that it does.

    Are there any local small business groups that you can join to create "networking" type connections?

  • Dec 02, 2009

    CEO

    Mark,

    I think relationships are key. If you can develop them offline or online, when someone is in need of your service they will think about you. Also, participating in forums like this, linked in, etc. will help to grow your network.

    Also something to consider is the content on your Web site. It's heavily geared toward Ruby, which is good for the training side of your business, but may not be great to hit your other target (which I'm assuming is a company looking for someone to develop an application).

    Many of our client's don't care about the technology we use, they just want to know we can get the job done. I think if you focused more on how you can help and less on the technology, you might be able to differentiate yourself from other developers.

    Just some thoughts...

    Mike

  • Dec 02, 2009

    Owner & General Manager

    Hi Mark.

    We tried many avevues from direct web advertising to emailing and we really got poor (to less) responses.
    Finally we hired an IT to revise our website and He found we did not have the correct keywords in our tags (metatags).
    We worked on it and today a lot of business find our website without paying web advertising that doesn't work and cost an arm and a leg. Emailing is out of consideration because usually get negative results.

    Revising your keywords is something good to try.

    Carl

  • Dec 03, 2009

    ELI WILNER

    I recently attended a social media presentation offered to a business group(CEO Trust ) i belong to.

    It led me to spend 40k plus with a firm .

    So my suggestion is present to groups /businesses in your geographic area .

  • Dec 09, 2009

    Brand Marketing Consultant

    Others have already advised along the lines I suggest: Increase your networking efforts. Lots of prospective clients may be mined via industry-specific networking (primary). The key is to network in fields where you either prefer to or normally garner business versus amongst your peers (secondary). So, if 20 percent of your clients are in the tech sector then start attending informational meetings, other. If the clients you want are in transportation, then start attending the same events (usually conferences or tradeshows) they attend. Same if many of your clients are in a particular region. On a recent occasion, simply participating on a panel that caters to the industry many of my clients are in yielded a client, which I've since retained.

    Do share what ends up being a best fit!

What do you think?

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