Growing your business has never been this easy. Knowing what to do ahead of time can greatly increase the chance of success with your new business venture. In any freelance career you choose, bootstrapping can greatly increase your chances of profiting and growing your small business as large as your wildest dreams. Bootstrapping is essential to every freelancer and an avenue you should not overlook. I know every freelancer reading this article right now can say yes to the following question: “Would you like to grow your business at little to no cost?” Well, bootstrapping is your answer.
In essence, bootstrapping is building your business with little to no start up funds. I’m sure we’ve all been there or are currently in a place to want to grow your freelance business but do not have the funds to flourish like you would want. Below I will outline ten steps to bootstrapping your freelance career that will definitely get you going on the right path.
- Study Your Market – This might seem like a no-brainer but most people skip this entirely and find out weeks or months down the road that they’ve missed out on a chance to learn ahead of time if their market is going to work or not. Why spend your time and money building a product or service in a market where it’s not needed or wanted? You also need to study the habits of your potential clients/customers. What are they into right now? Where do you normally see them or is there a place you know you can find them? These are key elements in your market studies. Don’t be lazy; take your time and make sure you’ve got a solid outline here.
- Study Your Competition – This is one thing I made sure of when I started my blog design business. Looking at what your potential competition is doing right can let you know what you should be doing. Alternately, finding cracks in their marketing or their business in general can really give you a heads up on how to make your business stand out. Use key points from your competition and build on it to be one step ahead of your competition.
- Outline Your Plans – This is by no means supposed to be a business plan in the sense of sitting down and writing 200 pages on what you’re going to do, how much money you’ll be making 10 years from now and so on. This should be a simple paragraph or two at most that outlines the following: the purpose of your marketing, how you’ll achieve this purpose, your target market, the marketing weapons you’ll use, your niche and your position and what you stand for, the identity of your business and your budget which should be displayed as a percentage of your projected gross revenues.
- Get A Website – If you’re an on-line business or a business that functions solely off-line, it doesn’t matter. You need a website. In my Small Business Blogging article, I mentioned how on Duct Tape Marketing they discussed and posted an audio tape of an interview they did with a company selling Fishing Lures who used the power of the web to jump leaps and bounds ahead of their competition. The owner credits the website to changing the way people find out about his business. It’s such a powerful statement, I had to mention it again here.
- Get Promotional Materials – You’ve got your marketing plan together right? I mean, it was step #3 so I hope you do! Now you’ve got to gather the promotional materials it calls for. Anything from business cards to flyer’s, t-shirts and web banners. These are your weapons and without them you will never win the fight.
- Call Call Call – If you’re selling a product, calling potential customers is the perfect way to find out if they’re interested. You don’t need to sell anything on the first call (or maybe you will) but getting your voice out there and making yourself accessible to the potential customers is desperately needed. Estimate around 100 calls per day because out of those 100, a seasoned bootstrapper who knows how to sell should make 10 sales.
- Email Email Email – So you’ve got a business that functions on-line? Well, make sure you email around 100 people per day. It is not that hard. If you’re targeting a specific service, (for this example we’ll use my blog design company) you can go to Google and type in “Fishing Blogs”. Replace the word fishing with any other word and you’ve got an infinite list of blog owners you can email about designs or redesigns. It’s that simple.
- Delegate – So you’ve got the point now that you’re a selling machine but you can’t find the time needed to create your products or deliver your services properly? Pass the selling aspects of your business along to someone else. DO NOT do this until you’ve become a selling machine yourself because if you can’t sell your product, how can someone else?
- Expand – Anything from office space to employees. This goes hand in hand with Delegate at #8 but is a vital aspect of bootstrapping your business. You’ve got to know when it’s time to expand. You can’t be a one man/woman show forever. You can’t work out of a 6×6 space in a spare bedroom forever. Give yourself room to breathe and your business will flourish.
- Reward Yourself – So you’ve been working your fingers to the bone for almost a year now? Give yourself time to relax, spend a little bit on “you” and not your business. Go ahead, you deserve it!
So you’re a freelancer, a copywriter or any type of small business owner for that matter, and you’re wondering why your growth isn’t as strong as you expected it to be? You’re stumped as to why your profits are barely reaching half of it’s potential when you know your product or service is top notch. You’ve got a website setup with all of the necessary information that any potential client would need to read in order to understand your product or service but yet you don’t get the flood of cash like you thought. Well, if that is you, you’re not alone.
Small business owners need to understand that blogging is not just for the teenagers or just another fad; it’s a powerful business tool that can help you gain exposure to an entirely new audience that you would have otherwise missed entirely. This holds true for any small business owner that is looking to expand and gain exposure, revenue and branding in their target markets. Below you will find ten reasons why I, and many other marketing authorities believe small business blogging is essential to your business’ growth. (please note they are in no particular order of importance).
- Business to Business Networking – If you’re a blog design company, you can network with a website hosting company to get deals for your clients. If you’re a pet supply company, try networking with an animal shelter to showcase your products in their shelter for families who are taking animals home. Blogging is a great way to spark up that conversation and building your businesses network on a daily basis.
- Holding Yourself Accountable – When you blog, it’s essentially you keeping track of your thoughts, things you learn and various other bits of information. Keeping a log in a spiral notebook can do the same thing, but at the same time, it’s not on the web
Post an article about something you HAVE to do, and watch how knowing that others are reading it forces you to act on it and complete your goals. - Expanding Your Knowledge – Lets face it; writing 1-2 articles per day is hard for most people (unless you’re small business revolves around copywriting). You’ve got to study and learn in order to know what you’re talking about, so by blogging you are expanding your knowledge. I read blogs every day in order to get new ideas for blog posts or just to expand my small business and marketing knowledge.
- Added Exposure – You might have a billboard in your city, but do 1,000 people subscribe to your blog and get updates every time you write a new article? Expose yourself to an entirely new world. I was recently talking to Derek from Click Consultants about how “internet life” and “real life” are two different things entirely. Make use of it and expose yourself to the “new world”.
- One Step Ahead of Competition – I talked about this before but didn’t touch on small business blogging to stay one step ahead of your competition. How many pet supply companies blog? How many locksmiths blog? If you’re blogging and your competitors are not, you’re one step ahead, because lets be honest; blogging is the future.
- Search Engines Love It – Why should a small business owner care about a search engine? Well, if you’re wanting the people who are searching there to find your website, you should care. If someone searches for your company name, or the topic of your company, wouldn’t you say it would be in your best interest to make sure you’re #1 for that search word? Exactly! Plus, if someone searches for “Knoxville Locksmith” you can make sure you’re #1 for that too. Search engines love blogs and will rank blogs higher then most websites. Our website is in the top 5 right now in google for “Bootstrapping” while others below us are full blown websites.
- The Power of Social Media – Over at Duck Tape Marketing they have a podcast about a company who sells fishing supplies and uses blogging and social media to reach an entire new client base. With certain articles in Digg getting 10 thousand visitors or stumbleupon getting 2-3 thousand visitors, who wouldn’t want that for their small business right? If you’re looking to brush up on your social media skills, I’d suggest checking out DoshDosh.
- Keeping Clients/Customers Informed – Some small businesses have used their blog to keep clients and customers informed about special deals, coupons and discounts they offer. The key here is to let them know that they can ONLY get the discounts by reading your websites blog, so you’ll constantly gain readers and repeat customers.
- Becoming an Authority – If you know a lot about the product or service you offer, why not blog about it and let people recognize that you’re rich in knowledge about it? By doing this, the potential clients you’ve got lurking around will start to gain trust and you’ll build up their faith in you because you obviously know a LOT about it. All done with a simple blog
- Showcasing Your Best Work – If you’re a small business owner, you can showcase your work like Jen does over at JK Photography on her blog. She is constantly posting pictures she shoots for people which in turns not only showcases her work but shows that she wants to show off her clients, who can in turn link their friends to the site to see their pictures. More visitors, more clients? You can do the same thing with new products you make or your recent blog design. No matter what your small business does, you can use your blog to showcase yourself and your business on a daily basis.
If you never knew you were doing something wrong, would you change? If you thought for your entire life that the way you conducted yourself and your small business was the proper way, would you consider that you might be wrong? Odds are you wouldn’t, but feel free to let me know in the comments section how you would handle yourself in that situation, I’d love to talk with you and see how we all would handle that situation.
Customer feedback is essential to your business; but why? If you’re customer feels great about your business and gives you a testimonial to showcase on your website, in your brochures and other print material, doesn’t that show you that you’re doing something right? Well, that is the perfect scenario but the majority of the time your customers won’t give honest feedback unless they’re asked for it; so ask.
Why asking the general public won’t work
There are many people out there that will tell you that you need to stick a ‘feedback form’ on your website and leave it at that. Or maybe they suggest that you send out a mass email to every client you’ve had or every email on your list. Doing the latter would result in 100+ emails being sent out all titled “Dear Valued Customer”. This is the absolute WORST way to attract attention to yourself and will undoubtedly result in 100+ emails being deleted. Generalizations just won’t work.
People want to feel like they’re part of a relationship with your business, like their opinion is truly valued and appreciated. In doing this, you’re catering to their ego’s and ensuring that they’ll give you a 100% honest review of your product or service. Without the personal attachment, they could care less and will throw your letter away or delete your email or totally disregard the big “GIVE ME FEEDBACK” button your website is now showing.
A simple solution to personalization
The easiest way to instill the personalized touch to your customers is with a hand written letter. Yes, you heard me right, hand written letters. I know you’re thinking it sounds crazy, but if a bootstrapper knows one thing, its how to maximize your productivity in a short amount of time to ensure you get the most out of your time. What does this mean for you? Simple; you’re going to see exactly how to streamline this method while keeping the personalized touch you need in order to get the customers attention long enough to get their honest opinion.
If you remember a while back in my The art of the email: Long emails are better for business article, I talked about a firefox plug-in named “Signature“. Well, we’re going to try something similar, but with handwriting. How you ask? Get a sheet of your stationary and get a pen; once you’ve got this far, you’re half way there. Now, write out a letter like you would to any client or customer you’ve just done business with except you need to leave out the introduction line and salutation.
So, you’ve got the entire body of the letter wrote out explaining how you valued their business and loved working with them on their project right? You’ve signed the bottom and you have everything setup except the welcome note at the top. Great! Now take this piece of paper and photo copy it 100+ times (1 sheet for every client you’re going to mail). On each sheet, now you only need to write out their name and a brief introduction paragraph to ensure that you’re giving that personalized touch that reaches their heart
The final step – lick the envelope
Well, not literally, but if you’re into that kind of thing, go for it. Personally, I use a sponge thats slightly damp to close my envelopes. The main thing to do during this process is to HAND WRITE the name and address of the person you’re contacting on the envelope. You might even want to write “Thank You” on it down towards the right or left of the envelope, just to give it that extra pop. Seeing a hand written letter gets a drastically higher open rate compared to a printed piece of envelope with a bright red “OPEN” sign on it so take advantage of this.
This post was inspired by an article I read at another website recently: How to seek feedback and I just wanted to expand on it. If you’re not a reader over at Trizle yet, I’d highly suggest checking the site out. Andrew is a great guy and someone who knows a LOT about business; and constantly is posting about it.
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Never bite the hand that feeds you. Thats what they say right? Well, they are right; especially in business. If you’re a small business owner and are looking for a quick way to kill any chance you have at growing, by all means, bite that hand. But I believe it’s safe to say that all of us here have a little more sense then that right?
Word of mouth advertising is the very best form of marketing your company can have. There’s nothing like a happy client who is ready to tell their friends and family about your services or products. If you’ve been hired for a job or you just shipped out $1,000 worth of product to a client and they’re so excited that they actually bring in business for you, how is that not a good thing? It costs you ZERO dollars, which is awesome for all of us who bootstrap on a daily basis, and it is achieved by doing the most simple task imaginable; PROVIDE TOP QUALITY SERVICE!
How to gain your word of mouth momentum
As stated above, top quality service is the best way to make sure your name is spoke in many conversations your current client or customer will have. This is the easiest thing to do, yet so many people overlook it. If you’ve got a client who you know has a lot of friends who are in a similar field and would make for great customers, why would it be so hard to answer emails quicker or make a couple extra phone calls giving progress reports on your project.
What about reminding him or her that you’re thankful for their business and hope that you’re living up to their expectations? This sentence has gained me many referrals due to the fact that people LOVE to be appreciated. And once again for all of us bootstrappers, it’s free! Never underestimate the power of going the extra mile for someone you know has connections or could possibly benefit you in the future. Some business relationships are meant to build upon farther then others, so make sure you can spot the positive ones and grow with it; your bank account will thank you
You’re getting referrals; now what?
So you’ve got some referrals coming in from past clients and you’re business is starting to do very well. What do you do now? Most people I’ve talked to seem to just sit back, enjoy the business and keep moving forward. I do NOT recommend doing this. You’re overlooking another GREAT avenue to keep the word of mouth going; thanking your referrers.
There’s many different options you can go with when you’re thanking your referrers; hand written thank you letters, percentage of the sale, gift basket, personal gifts, and so on. No matter what you do, your referrer will be happy and will end up telling everyone about the gift they’re getting as well. When this happens, the clients they’re referring might get excited and want to refer you more customers so they can also get the free perks. It’s a chain reaction at this point and from one referral could potentially spawn 100 referrals and a small army of energetic people who are passionate about your product and love the perks they receive when they’re referring you clients.
I want to thank my readers
I wanted to take the last bit of this article to thank all of you; not for referring me clients or anything like that, but just for reading this website and commenting on my articles. It lets me know that I’m doing something worth while and helping at least one person grow their business with just that much less stress. So, thank you
Any winner knows the secret to success. Anyone whoever finished a marathon, lasted 20 years or more in a relationship or even built a company from the ground up knows what the “secret” ingredient is. The simple one word answer is “Commitment”. However, many people will hear that word and assume it is “just too easy” and decide that it won’t work before they even try to become committed to their product, service, marketing plan or networking. Little do they know that they have failed ‘being committed to commitment’.
Bootstrapping & Commitment
Any bootstrapper knows that the goal is to get the highest return of investment from your business with minimal costs. but what will you do when your marketing plan or your various advertisements are just not producing the instant results you’re after? Do you tuck your tail between your legs and run or do you stand tall like a true bootstrapper and hold your ground? I hope you will do as I have and many others have and stick it out for the long haul. Many marketing plans fail in comparison to what your optimistic goals are within the first weeks or months. Sticking it out and being committed to your marketing is what will cause the tide to change in your favor.
Real life example
In the book Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson talks about when he was hired on by a cigarette company in the 1960′s to boost their branding and help raise their profits. The main goal was to become one of, if not, the most influential cigarette companies out. They were currently ranked #31. Jay explained to the owner of the company that it would take time and the owner agreed and followed through with the plans and was committed to the marketing. A year after the campaigns started, they were still ranked #31. The owner was not shaken and stayed committed to the marketing and when you look today, they are they #1 most recognizable cigarette company out. One out of every five cigarettes come from this company; Marlboro. Without commitment it Marlboro would not be where it is today.
Remember next time you set out to create goals for your business or your life, commitment is what will make or break your accomplishments. If Thomas Edison can try 10,000 ways to develop a storage battery and keep going, why can’t we show some commitment to our goals and business plans? Bootstrapping is, after all, finding ways to grow your business with little to no money, and what better way to do that (for free) then by showing some commitment.
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