How To Get Clients Using Directories
Online classified, you’ve heard of them, they’re a very powerful tool that can generate steady clients for your design agency. Ebay owns 10 online classifieds brands which span across 1000 different cities worldwide.
We’ve developed a method to acquire clients from classifieds websites in your area. If you follow this method there will be a ton of warm leads waiting for you everyday of customer that want to pay for your services.
Read below, we’ll explain exactly how to get steady clients.
Let’s get started!
Step 1:
Find the classifieds service that is popular in your country. In the United States, Craigslist is the most popular followed by Ebay Classifieds. Here is a full list of additional popular classified sites across the US.
In Canada Kijiji is the most popular.
To find the classifieds website that is popular in your country simply go to the preferred search engine of choice and do the search “Best classifieds sites”.
Step 2:
Once you have identified the most popular classifieds site in your area it’s time to start canvassing for clients. Within each classifieds site there are two different types of postings. One type of posting is someone who is offering a service or product for sale. The other type of posting is someone who is requesting a specific product or service to buy.
Identify each of these two section in the classifieds website in your area, then create a customized email template for which you use to copy and paste to each potential client.
We’ve got you covered, below is an email template that we have used successfully on classifieds sites to get clients.
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Here is an email template we found effective.
Hello _______,
I came across your posting and was curious if you would be interested in help with your website. I took the liberty to made a quick sample design for you:
https://new-website.bookmark.com ( Replace this with the website AiDA creates for you ).
Here you can see an idea of what direction I can take you guys in. This website is only a mock-up and can be further customized to your exact specifications. The website I build will be attractive on all devices. Your website will be indexed correctly for Google search engine to improve your search ranking.
If you are interested in speaking about a new website, please feel free to reach out!
Thanks for your time and I hope to hear back from you!
[Your Name and Phone Number]
Step 3 – Canvassing companies that offer a service.
Bookmark’s AIDA creates websites across 750 different business types, this means you can create a website for any type of business easily. Let’s begin by searching the classifieds site for services offered by a company. When viewing the listings you will notice that many of the companies are small businesses who do not have a website at all. Their listing provides a phone number only. If they had a website they would post it within the ad.
What you need to do is simply contact each service provider with your templated email and if possible create a sample website using AIDA for their business type. It’s very quick and improves your sales pitch a lot showing an example website which is custom to their business type.
Step 4 – Monitoring classifieds for customers requesting a service or product.
Every single day across every city in the world there are customers requesting to have their websites created by someone like you. They post ads in classifieds asking for design companies to pitch them. Monitor these ads across different cities and have your email template ready to send to any customer requesting web design services. Remember, you have a big advantage with your design agency. You can send mockup examples of a website for them to see instantly. In fact, you can send 3 different examples in about 5 minutes using AIDA. Simply create the first website using Bookmark by answering 7 simple questions, you will then see that AIDA asks you if you would like to have a new website created. Say yes, create 2 more websites for a total of 3. Each of these websites will be stored in your dashboard and voila you have 3 different samples to show a potential client needing a website. This will instantly put you to the front of the line for a potential sale. The other advantage of Bookmark is that you did it in a matter of minutes. This allows you to keep the cost down, further adding to the overall appeal of your offering when negotiating with potential clients.
Canvassing for clients on Classifieds is only one method you can use. Find out what works for you. What is your strength? Do you like email outreach? Or are you comfortable with finding a business phone number and jumping on the phone?