In my coaching program, 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 start-up businesses are easy to find and provide plenty of opportunities to practice your emerging copywriting skills.

I talked about three tips for aspiring copywriters in the past. I recommend any new copywriter to follow these three tips to build a track record and get to a level that makes them appealing to higher-paying clients.

After your skills are developed, however, it becomes 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 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 business as it is in mentoring.)

Plus, it’s important to note that, if you’re good, word will get around. 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 that 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

Writing articles and press releases, and submitting them to websites 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 over 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, 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.

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 a salesletter in disguise. Once people get a taste of what you can offer, they will want more. 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 with non-competing businesses in a variety of ways.

For example, if you’re a web copywriter, with web designers you can refer clients to each other, or create “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, and so on. 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 previous article. However, to get to the next level, the trick is to find centers of influence and key partners 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 set up referral systems with key people and businesses whose partners, suppliers, markets, and clients are comprised of people or businesses that fall within your target market.

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

If you already use forums and prefer this method, this is 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.

But 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 writing their copy, or get 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 will eventually 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 software targeted top marketers.

I got the job by hanging out on search engine discussion boards. 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, you will want to include blogs, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, and social groups (such as mastermind groups, coaching groups, and even offline groups like clubs, tradeshows, seminars, and associations) to find these top-shelf clients and key centers of influence.

Eventually, as you apply these techniques and gain more clients, it will lead to a point where your 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

Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, author, speaker, consultant, and CEO of The Success Doctor, Inc. Visit his blog and signup free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com.

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