Three Tips For Finding Top-Shelf Clients

A stu­dent, who is an upcom­ing copy­writer, recently asked where he could find clients will­ing to pay higher rates for his skills.

Hav­ing built a client base through net­work­ing on Inter­net forums geared towards start-​​up busi­ness own­ers, he now wanted to find oppor­tu­ni­ties that would allow for upward mobil­ity within his craft.

This is a com­mon sce­nario, because local and espe­cially start-​​up busi­nesses are easy to find, and pro­vide plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice your emerg­ing copy­writ­ing skills.

In a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, I talked about three tips for aspir­ing copy­writ­ers. I rec­om­mend any new copy­writer to fol­low these three tips to start build­ing a track record and get to a level that makes them appeal­ing to higher-​​paying clients.

But after your copy­writ­ing skills are devel­oped, how­ever, it becomes desir­able if not nec­es­sary to seek out clients — bet­ter, more lucra­tive clients — who are estab­lished enough to pay a fair wage for your skills and, above all, your results.

Granted, mak­ing this tran­si­tion to a busier, in-​​demand copy­writer who com­mands higher fees requires break­ing out of your com­fort zone and delv­ing into new net­works to increase the like­li­hood of rub­bing shoul­ders with your tar­get market.

(As the say­ing goes, “If you want to become a mil­lion­aire, hang out with other mil­lion­aires.” This is true in net­work­ing as it is in devel­op­ing the mil­lion­aire mindset.)

Plus, it’s impor­tant to note that, if you’re good, word will get around. With­out any prompt­ing from you. The very best copy­writ­ers often need not mar­ket themselves.

How­ever, there are ways to lever­age and spring­board that word-​​of-​​mouth process. So to get to the next level, there are three main tech­niques I per­son­ally applied to get­ting the major­ity of my copy­writ­ing clients. Any copy­writer will be well-​​served in adapt­ing them.

These three tips are:

1. Article Marketing

I know there are sta­ple mar­ket­ing prac­tices online, such as search engine opti­miza­tion. But one of the sim­plest and most potent online mar­ket­ing meth­ods I’ve used since the begin­ning of my career, one I still do to this day, is sim­ple arti­cle marketing.

Writ­ing arti­cles and press releases, and sub­mit­ting them to web­sites, direc­to­ries, ezines, blogs (such as guest blog­ging), and arti­cle repos­i­to­ries, is an excel­lent way to get exam­ples of your work in front of your tar­get mar­ket and estab­lish your expertise.

You may con­sider hir­ing a Vir­tual Assis­tant to take care of the sub­mis­sions. I have a pub­li­cist on retainer who sub­mits my arti­cles to 3,000 out­lets each month, includ­ing news sites, direc­to­ries, and editors/​publishers, as well as offline pub­li­ca­tions and magazines.

2. Viral Marketing

This has per­son­ally been the sin­gle, great­est tool for me in attract­ing clients. About 12 years ago, I wrote my book, “The 10 Com­mand­ments of Power Posi­tion­ing,” in which I dis­tilled my 10 most pop­u­lar mar­ket­ing and copy­writ­ing tips.

They key to its pop­u­lar­ity, how­ever, is that I offered it for free and let peo­ple pass it around. By encour­ag­ing oth­ers to dis­trib­ute it freely, I’ve attracted a con­tin­u­ing stream of quote requests from peo­ple who have stum­bled onto my book.

A men­tor once said to me: “Don’t be a speaker, be an expert who speaks. Don’t be a con­sul­tant, be an expert who con­sults. Don’t be an author, be an expert who authors books.” To that I would add, “Don’t be a copy­writer, be an expert who writes copy.”

There­fore, estab­lish your­self as an expert. As the say­ing goes, “Pub­lish or per­ish.” The moment you write your first report, white paper, ebook, or self-​​published book, you estab­lish your­self as an expert, par­tic­u­larly in your spe­cific niche or field.

Plus, your pub­li­ca­tion is really your saleslet­ter in dis­guise. Once peo­ple get a taste of what you can offer, they will want more. In 20 years in this busi­ness, the clients, projects, and speak­ing engage­ments I landed because of that one lit­tle book are incalculable.

3. Centers-of-Influence Marketing

You can set up strate­gic mar­ket­ing alliances, joint-​​venture part­ners, and refer­ral sys­tems, even auto­mated ones, with non-​​competing busi­nesses in a vari­ety of ways.

For exam­ple, if you’re a web copy­writer, then with web design­ers you can refer clients to each other, or cre­ate “ser­vice bun­dles” where you do the copy and the designer does the design work in a sin­gle ser­vice pack­age both of you pro­mote individually.

Sim­i­lar co-​​operative efforts are pos­si­ble with print­ers, direct mar­keters, coaches, con­sul­tants, etc. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are lim­it­less. Sim­ply think of a non-​​competing busi­ness or ser­vice provider who tar­gets your mar­ket, and how can you can part­ner with them.

I talked about cre­at­ing strate­gic alliances in my other arti­cle. But to get to the next level, find cen­ters of influ­ence whose opin­ions your more lucra­tive tar­get mar­ket values.

Where before you would have cre­ated strate­gic alliances with any­one who can refer clients to you, now the goal would be to cre­ate them with key influ­encers whose part­ners, sup­pli­ers, mar­kets, and clients con­sist of prospects that fall within your tar­get market.

Nev­er­the­less, the key to suc­cess with the meth­ods above is to use them to get in front of the clients you desire. If you want higher-​​paying clients, then go where they go.

If, like my stu­dent ear­lier, you already use forums and pre­fer this method, then the above meth­ods are a bit more com­pli­cated than when seek­ing out start-​​ups because there are only a hand­ful of forums for more advanced clients and businesses.

In my expe­ri­ence, most of my top clients have aban­doned forums as they are a waste of time — obvi­ously, they’d rather spend time mak­ing money than in forums.

How­ever, to attract top-​​shelf clients, you need to pin­point their cen­ters of influ­ence. Often, these are the “pick and shovel” mak­ers. Get your foot in the door by hang­ing out with them, writ­ing their copy, or get­ting them to pro­mote you in some way.

By “pick and shovel” mak­ers, I mean ser­vice providers, mar­keters, web­site own­ers, and sup­pli­ers who sell prod­ucts and ser­vices that serve an exist­ing base of top-​​shelf clients.

Tar­get loca­tions where they con­gre­gate — whether they are blogs, forums, social net­work­ing sites, etc — that are specif­i­cally geared at the indus­try of your top prospects.

Again, these loca­tions are not where clients hang out directly, but this can be used as a way to iden­tify, approach, and net­work with these pick-​​and-​​shovel mak­ers who even­tu­ally will put you in front of, or get you in touch with, the clients you want.

I per­son­ally used this tech­nique to get my name out there and in front of the top guns when I started online. For exam­ple, I wrote the copy for a very pop­u­lar SEO soft­ware many years ago. That par­tic­u­lar soft­ware tar­geted top Inter­net marketers.

I got the job by hang­ing out on search engine mes­sage boards, soft­ware dis­cus­sion groups, and SEO forums. The result? My copy did fab­u­lously well — so well, in fact, that fol­low­ing this one project, I was inun­dated with work to the point of turn­ing clients away.

These days, social media help to make things easier.

So include blogs, social net­work­ing sites, and dis­cus­sion groups (such as mas­ter­mind groups, coach­ing groups) to find top-​​shelf clients and key cen­ters of influ­ence. Don’t for­get offline groups too, like clubs, tradeshows, sem­i­nars, and associations.

Even­tu­ally, as you apply these tech­niques, gain vis­i­bil­ity, and work with bet­ter clients, it will lead you to a point where clients will begin to come pri­mar­ily through word of mouth.

This is the point where, for exam­ple, a top mar­keter who buys some mar­ket­ing soft­ware will go back to the soft­ware provider and say, “Hey, your software’s great, but your copy is what sold me… who wrote it for you?” And bingo! Referral.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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