- Original Poster
- #1
Why don't we share the single biggest challenge we had when it comes to sales & marketing and how we got around it (If you still haven't got around, feel free to ask the community for advice).
This way we can help each others out in a more efficient way and share helpful insights with each other.
I'll begin with mine.
Challenge: Getting My First Customer
This was, by far, the biggest challenge I faced. I am from India and I found it extremely hard to get my first SEO customer.
Hurdles to Overcome: Location, Pricing, No Testimonial
I had no way of building trust with my customers. I couldn't meet them in person because I was living very far away from them, my English was not the best (still Improving) since it's not my native language, My pricing was a bit high compared to other SEO people from India and most of all I had no customer testimonial to show for my service.
I had the experience of doing SEO for my own websites, but I couldn't show it to anyone because I had sold them all when I needed some cash urgently.
How I overcame this challenge?
Inbound Marketing!!!
Inbound marketing is a marketing concept where your customers find you instead of you chasing behind leads.
You can get targeted leads through blogging, social media marketing, forum participation and so on.
One of the few forums I was active on was Digital Point Forum. If you look at their sales threads, it's full of hype and all sorts of black hat SEO techniques. There is less than 0.1% chance that you will land a decent client if you post there.
I was soon fed up with chasing customers and spamming (I feel bad for starting out this way at first, but that's a very big lesson learned) everyone with offers through PM's and Hijacking other threads.
That's when I changed my motive to helping people on the forum and also through blogging since I thought I could no longer get any customers as I thought that I completely sucked at sales.
Soon, I began noticing people coming up to me to advice. I started helping them out in all ways I can since I did not have any intentions of making money or gaining their business.
Soon, I began landing paid gigs for SEO, site building, content writing, and so on. That was my "AHA" moment..
People say that you must provide value to people to gain their trust. I never knew how I was supposed to do that until I accidentally stumbled upon the concept of inbound marketing.
To this day, I have been applying the same Principle of providing value without expecting anything in return and that is what helps me get customers for my business.
Your turn....
This way we can help each others out in a more efficient way and share helpful insights with each other.
I'll begin with mine.
Challenge: Getting My First Customer
This was, by far, the biggest challenge I faced. I am from India and I found it extremely hard to get my first SEO customer.
Hurdles to Overcome: Location, Pricing, No Testimonial
I had no way of building trust with my customers. I couldn't meet them in person because I was living very far away from them, my English was not the best (still Improving) since it's not my native language, My pricing was a bit high compared to other SEO people from India and most of all I had no customer testimonial to show for my service.
I had the experience of doing SEO for my own websites, but I couldn't show it to anyone because I had sold them all when I needed some cash urgently.
How I overcame this challenge?
Inbound Marketing!!!
Inbound marketing is a marketing concept where your customers find you instead of you chasing behind leads.
You can get targeted leads through blogging, social media marketing, forum participation and so on.
One of the few forums I was active on was Digital Point Forum. If you look at their sales threads, it's full of hype and all sorts of black hat SEO techniques. There is less than 0.1% chance that you will land a decent client if you post there.
I was soon fed up with chasing customers and spamming (I feel bad for starting out this way at first, but that's a very big lesson learned) everyone with offers through PM's and Hijacking other threads.
That's when I changed my motive to helping people on the forum and also through blogging since I thought I could no longer get any customers as I thought that I completely sucked at sales.
Soon, I began noticing people coming up to me to advice. I started helping them out in all ways I can since I did not have any intentions of making money or gaining their business.
Soon, I began landing paid gigs for SEO, site building, content writing, and so on. That was my "AHA" moment..
People say that you must provide value to people to gain their trust. I never knew how I was supposed to do that until I accidentally stumbled upon the concept of inbound marketing.
To this day, I have been applying the same Principle of providing value without expecting anything in return and that is what helps me get customers for my business.
Your turn....
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