Seeking more clients for UK based freelancing marketplace

[nancyosas]

Hi everyone,

I am Nancy, the founder of Firmxxperts. A UK based freelancing marketplace connecting UK based freelancers with businesses seeking freelancing experts.

We now have over a thousand freelancers signed up but struggling to get more businesses onboard.

Most of the businesses using our platform found us directly from search engine. We are not ranking on a lot of keywords so we are not getting a lot of organic customers.

Have tried running search engine ads but they are so expensive.

Any suggestions on best places to get more businesses onboard?

Many thanks!!

 

[fisicx]

Hi @nancyosas and welcome to UKBF.

Website reviews are only permitted for business members so we can't comment on the actual platform.

What do you mean by struggling to get businesses on board? What are you offering that is different to about every other freelancer site? Why would a business want to use your site to find a freelancer?

Looking at the site all I can say is the freelencers advertising their services are mostly junk. "Rank page 1 On Google in 2 days for £9.99" is about as bad as it gets. I wouldn't want my business to go anywhere near someone offering that sort of service

 

[nancyosas]

Hi @fisicx

Thanks for your feedback. As the platform is new, I am looking into ways of promoting and interested in learning how others promoted their businesses after launch (especially when on low budget). ​

I am not sure to which service you are referring to "for 9.99" but a number of freelancers offer their services for various prices. You would have to read the service description to see what they are offering for that price.

Regarding the businesses onboard, we are currently working with a number of businesses who found us online but we need to improve on this hence my previous comment

 

[fisicx]

If you want to get more businesses using your platform you need to spend money on marketing. And you need to stop competing with the likes of fiver and other cheap freelancer sites.

Almost all the offers I looked at were cheap and untrustworthy. And this is going to be your biggest problem. Businesses aren’t stupid. They know you can’t get a decent logo for £20 or SEO for £9.99.

Identify your target customer and focus your marketing on meeting the needs of those customers. Spend money to make money. You can’t market a business like your on the cheap.

 

[DanteMosley]

It's gonna be a good idea to make helpful content like blog posts, success stories, and reports that show how your platform can solve problems for businesses. Put this stuff on your website and share it on social media to bring in more visitors and show that you're a reliable place to find freelancers.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Getting noticed is a mix of spending lots of money on promotion and lots of time on content and engagement - you can decide the balance.

Before doing that I'd suggests lots of research on who exactly you are targeting and what their triggers are.

Having 'got noticed' you need to focus on converting visits into paying customers.

Avoiding website reviews, my personal bugbear is when I can't easily see the legal entity with whom I am dealing.

 

[AlanJ1]

Hi @fisicx

Thanks for your feedback. As the platform is new, I am looking into ways of promoting and interested in learning how others promoted their businesses after launch (especially when on low budget). ​

I am not sure to which service you are referring to "for 9.99" but a number of freelancers offer their services for various prices. You would have to read the service description to see what they are offering for that price.

Regarding the businesses onboard, we are currently working with a number of businesses who found us online but we need to improve on this hence my previous comment

What fisicx was saying is you have people almost certainly offering "black hat" SEO techniques which doesn't look great from a site perspective.

 

[NickGrogan]

Spend a few hundred pounds on the many SEO and marketing offers that you're promoting to others and you'll rank number one have thousands of backlinks and citations and appear at the top of the local Google Business Profile pages.

If you're not willing to spend money on the services that you promote, then you should think about why you're promoting them to others.

 

[nancyosas]

It's gonna be a good idea to make helpful content like blog posts, success stories, and reports that show how your platform can solve problems for businesses. Put this stuff on your website and share it on social media to bring in more visitors and show that you're a reliable place to find freelancers.

Thank you very much for the advice. Putting some clients testimonials together this week. Will also now focus on creating blog posts on the impact our freelancers have had on businesses

 

[nancyosas]

Spend a few hundred pounds on the many SEO and marketing offers that you're promoting to others and you'll rank number one have thousands of backlinks and citations and appear at the top of the local Google Business Profile pages.

If you're not willing to spend money on the services that you promote, then you should think about why you're promoting them to others.

We are actually using freelancers from our platform for our SEO and we are ranking for several keywords. As we are new in business, we are actively thinking of other ways to reach our target audience in a budget friendly manner

 

[fisicx]

We are actually using freelancers from our platform for our SEO and we are ranking for several keywords. As we are new in business, we are actively thinking of other ways to reach our target audience in a budget friendly manner

Are those keywords attracting any traffic? Do those visitors convert?

There is no budget friendly manner. Building up this sort of business will cost a lot of money over many years. You are competing against some big players whose marketing spend is in millions. You might get a tiny trickle of new business via direct marketing but without a decent marketing budget you will always be at the bottom of the pile.

Pay the freelancers on your site (not the junk SEO offers) to sort out your marketing plan.

Sorry to be all doom and gloom but I've seen loads of sites like these over the years and every single one failed due to lack of investment.

 

[vnfxtktek]

Sometimes, it's not about casting a wide net, but about fishing in the right pond, you know? Also, have you considered leveraging content marketing? Your platform could benefit from creating valuable resources or blog posts tailored to the needs of businesses looking for freelancers. It's a great way to not only boost your SEO but also establish your platform as a go-to resource in the freelancing community.

 

[fantheflames]

Sometimes, it's not about casting a wide net, but about fishing in the right pond, you know? Also, have you considered leveraging content marketing? Your platform could benefit from creating valuable resources or blog posts tailored to the needs of businesses looking for freelancers. It's a great way to not only boost your SEO but also establish your platform as a go-to resource in the freelancing community.

This is so true about fishing in the right pond, rather than going for the entire sea. I'd like to comment on your website @nancyosas as there's a couple of things I'd suggest right off the bat to change (but you need a membership).

As your problem is finding businesses, I'd see what you can get from your database of freelancers at the moment while you're building content and gathering funds for a marketing budget.

This could be constructing a survey to get information from your freelancers i.e. how your platform can be improved or what their needs are at the moment. With should be helpful for your marketing and website development.

Conversely, you could ask business owners on your website and on other platforms, which may require a marketing budget, about your platform and their needs, which will help you build a stronger database of businesses and also help with your marketing and website development.

 

[nancyosas]

This is so true about fishing in the right pond, rather than going for the entire sea. I'd like to comment on your website @nancyosas as there's a couple of things I'd suggest right off the bat to change (but you need a membership).

As your problem is finding businesses, I'd see what you can get from your database of freelancers at the moment while you're building content and gathering funds for a marketing budget.

This could be constructing a survey to get information from your freelancers i.e. how your platform can be improved or what their needs are at the moment. With should be helpful for your marketing and website development.

Conversely, you could ask business owners on your website and on other platforms, which may require a marketing budget, about your platform and their needs, which will help you build a stronger database of businesses and also help with your marketing and website development.

Thank you very much for your suggestions. We are regularly auditing our service and trying out new techniques to see which one works. Things have started picking up and we are now actively engaging with businesses looking for freelancers.

 

[fantheflames]

Thank you very much for your suggestions. We are regularly auditing our service and trying out new techniques to see which one works. Things have started picking up and we are now actively engaging with businesses looking for freelancers.

That's great news. One further suggestion I'd like to make is make sure any process you create there's a feedback loop or phase somewhere. You need to learn from everything you do so the process gets better and stronger every time.

 

[Anthony015]

Thank you very much for your suggestions. We are regularly auditing our service and trying out new techniques to see which one works. Things have started picking up and we are now actively engaging with businesses looking for freelancers.

Also you need to improve your website make it look more modern. Looks like you are use old Wordpress themes.