5 Free Ways Agencies and Freelancers Can Get Clients With Dennis Demori

Dennis, thanks for being here, my friend. How are you? Hey man. Good to see you. Good to see you. Um, I'm excited for you to be here today. Um, for everyone watching, we're going to be talking about one way how Dennis recommends not to get clients and a couple of ways in which she does recommend to get clients. Before we dive into those tips, do you mind starting kind of like with what you're working on or your background? Sure. So my name is Dennis Samori. I am an email marketer consultant. And before this stuff, which I've been doing since about 2017, I did the whole corporate thing. So for about 15 years I had worked, uh, in the mortgage business and the advertising business. And eventually I made my way to direct response copywriting up to find a few different things like web design, which I sucked at. So I, uh, I've been doing this since early 2017 and work with a number of, uh, six, seven, eight figure clients that people have probably heard of, like Legion athletics, some of the Agoura divisions, um, different coaches, uh, guys you see on Twitter, like at Latin more. And, uh, I'm doing a few different things right now. So I work with clients one-on-one. I also do, um, well, I also create info products like books, courses, workshops, and I also coach and mentor students, uh, which are typically freelance email copywriters as well. Although I do have some other kinds of business owners like fitness coaches in, in my membership community. So I kind of alternate between all those different things and, but it's all tends to be within the umbrella of email marketing and online business. Amazing. And thank you for that. And obviously inherently with what you do, you're having to come up with ways to retain clients, but also get new clients and that's really kind of why we're here today. So the floor is yours. I think you wanted to start with ways in which you do not recommend getting a client and then ways in which you do recommend. And so the floor is yours and thank you for being here. Cool. Yeah. So we're not really going to get into retention today, which is a super important topic, but I want to focus more on someone who's at the beginner stage of their business and trying to find their first client. So, uh, but before I get into that, I wanted to bring this up because, uh, freelancers tend to waste a lot of time on methods that might not make sense for where they're at right now. Right. So you, for example, you're not going to do what Gary Vee is doing in his business because your business is at a different stage, right? That makes, I think that makes sense to everybody. So, uh, what I want to talk about first is using paid traffic to get clients, uh, like Facebook ads or Instagram ads. I don't believe we're a beginner. That is where you want to start. Reason being, that means you need to have your, your audience dialed in. You have a clear specific audience. You need to have strong copy. You need to, uh, have a strong offer. And then you have to combine all that with the ability to, uh, create ad copy and the technical aspect of running the ads for someone who's brand new to this stuff. I think it's overwhelming. I think it's just way too much. And since you're spending money on ads, right? They're not free. You're probably going to burn through a lot of money before you get any kinds of role results if you get any kinds of results. Okay. Uh, so the kind of person who can do all those things together, I'm thinking that's probably going to put you in like the top 10% of freelance copywriters who can do the copy and creative and, uh, the management of the paid traffic. So that is something you can definitely explore down the road, but I wouldn't start with that if you were just, uh, getting your business off the ground. Now, as far as ways to get clients, right? So, um, some of these you, I'm sure you've heard of some of them, maybe you haven't really thought about. Um, so number one is cold emails, which I'm sure a lot of people have heard about and they interviewed other guys and talked about cold emails before. So I still believe that's one of the best methods if you're getting started. Once you're more experienced, you might not want to do that. I really don't love it for someone who's more experienced because you're constantly in hunting mode instead of having clients come to you, which is really nice. Uh, you can't be getting a good referral or having reached out to you because they saw a post on social media or because they read your email newsletter. Um, you can't top that. So, uh, if you're new, cold processing makes sense because you just don't really have much of an audience, much of a reputation. Uh, so it makes sense for you to initiate outreach with companies. Uh, now as far, one of the things that are, let's talk about a couple of things that people get stuck on the mistakes that I see. So with cold emails, you see the same problems over and over and over again, which are the emails are not personalized. It sounds like a template and it sounds like it's going to 500 other people. They are too long. Okay. You can write a good long cold email. I've seen that. The problem is, again, if you're a beginner, you're probably not going to be able to be at the level where you can keep somebody's interest for that amount of time and in that many words. So you have to get to the point. And I say this all the time when I'm critiquing students, get to the point. You know, imagine you're paying $5 per word. You really need this word here. Usually many times you don't. So personalize the emails, uh, get to the point. Uh, and also include a strong call to action in your emails. So you need to do, you need to tell people what to do next. You can't just assume they're going to know what to do because they won't. So you have to give them clear specific instructions so they know, okay, I have to reply or okay. Um, I need to click on this. Okay. So you need clear instructions because if you assume people are going to do it, they're probably not. Uh, so that's called emails. I can go into more detail if you'd like, or we can just move on to the next one. I think that's fantastic. Okay, cool. So first of all, it's called the email. Second one that everyone has heard about and a lot of people hate our job boards and there are different kinds of job boards in terms of quality and the types of clients you can find. Now, uh, one of the big, like the bigger ones are five or Upwork. I like Upwork. I have no issue with it. I know, uh, people, uh, a lot of people are hesitant to use it or they say, well, it's just bad clients, or they don't, they have a small budget. They pay low fees. That's not really true. Um, I found good clients on there before, uh, four figure deals, retainer clients, they are out there. Uh, so it's a job platform is going to have the 80 20 rule, right? So the top 20% or top 10% of freelancers are doing pretty well, right? You just, you don't want to be in that bottom 80% cause those are the people climbing over each other for clients. Those are the ones struggling. Those are the ones dealing with low fees. Uh, but the main things I like about job boards, and this again solves a lot of problems for beginners is that, you know, they're looking for someone, you know what type of project they're hiring for, you know, that they have a budget. Okay. Which you may not know. Like if you send somebody a cold email, you don't know if they're looking for anyone right now. You don't know if they have any money to invest in advertising. You know those things with job boards. Now one of the things that people don't seem to realize with job boards is just kind of like a hidden layer where if you have a good profile or reputation on that job board, clients will reach out to you. So they'll never post those jobs. Okay. Uh, and they'll reach out to you and, and, and um, see if it's a fit. So you don't even have to do the prospecting, right? You don't have to initiate the contact. They'll come to you. So as I was saying earlier, that's pretty nice when clients reach out to you instead of the other way around, because it also means that you have improved your positioning. Okay. Uh, that's one of the challenges I see with cold emails. There are certain tactics you can use, but you need to think about like where you are and like the, uh, the positioning totem pole, right? If you're cold emailing a client, client's here and you're down here, right? Cause you are going to them, trying to get them to do business together and trying to get them to pay you. Right. Um, and it, the job board, it's a little more even. Uh, but then if people reach out to you, clients reach out to you, it's more like this, right? Cause the client's here and they see you and like, I really want that guy. I really want to work with her. I want that freelancer. So, uh, nobody really talks about these things, but there are these kinds of like these factors that play into the quality of clients you get. Uh, and a quick note on, on fees, because a lot of people have these complaints. Oh, the fees are too low. You can charge whatever you want, right? There's no going rate at freelancing. You can charge whatever you want. You can charge $10 for an email. You can charge $300 for an email. You know, how good are you at, how good are you at conveying to the client the value of what you're providing? Right. The client says, Hey, I need a five email sequence. And you're like, okay. And the client's like, you know, I need you to do this for a hundred bucks. You're like, okay. You know, you're just being an order taker. You're not really negotiating. You're not using your marketing sales skills. And you're not doing what a real professional is doing, which is doing an audit of the business, understanding what they need, what their goals are, um, and, uh, how you can make an impact and also conveying what kind of value you can deliver. So lots of layers to this. And it's not, so it doesn't have to be so straightforward as client says, I need X and you do it for them projects over. And now what? You got to go look for clients again. Okay. Huge mistake. Yeah. Huge mistake where you should be doing with every single client is thinking about if I was, if this was my business, how would I grow it? Right. So I don't even just look at email and you're starting out. Yeah. You're just going to probably look at that one thing. I try to take a more holistic view. I think about, okay, what are the clients offers? What are the upsells, the cross-sells, what affiliate promotions can we do? How can we retain clients? How can we ascend people into higher ticket offers, uh, and other things? So, uh, the more value you can provide to the client, the longer they'll stick with you, right? Cause you're helping to helping create more value and getting the results. Um, and you, so that what I'm trying to say is you don't have to bounce around from one low paying job or project to another. Okay. You may start that way, but it doesn't have to be that way. You can really get more leverage out of the prospect you're already doing. That's job boards. Uh, number three, number three is, uh, we'll talk about briefly, which is events. So events can work out awesome for you. I know they've worked out really well for some freelancers where you just go to an event and there's a bunch of clients there and you meet them, you get to know each other. Um, you get to meet face to face, which is the big thing. And so now they have a face to the person, right? They know who you are. They know a little bit about you. And, uh, you can clean up and you come out with two, three, four clients, and you're all set for the year that that can happen. The problem with events is that you're not going to go every single day, right? They don't happen that often. Sometimes they cost money. And if you're just starting out, maybe you don't have the money to invest in events. But even if you go to one or two a year, that could make sense from a, I don't like to say networking, but a relationship building perspective, right? Uh, where you can meet people, get to know them and start forming those relationships with people in your industry. And then, yeah, you might get clients or you might not get clients now because the timing's off, but maybe in three months or six months, it's going to, uh, deliver. And then you're going to be glad you went. So I wouldn't, uh, put a ton of energy into events, but just keep your eyes on them. Uh, it's cause if you have a some free time and you can make, take a day or two off to do that, it could be worth it. That's event. Fourth is something we were just talking about earlier, which is spillover clients from agencies. So here's how this works. I know this is working really well for some people. When you have an agency, let's say it's a Facebook ads agency or an e-commerce agency. Uh, you are going to have a limit, right? You're going to have a limit with your resources and your bandwidth. So you're only going to be able to service a certain number of clients in a given timeframe. So what happens to all the other clients that the agency can't help? Well, there's a couple of different options. So number one is that you white label your service. So for example, if I'm working with chase and, uh, I know he focuses on e-commerce, but let's say actually, no, let me, let me, okay, let's stick with this example. Um, except not white labeling. We'll talk about referrals. So, uh, so let's say I'm working with, with, uh, with chase. He's working with e-commerce clients, but he's booked. He's like, I can't handle anymore. My team can't handle more people. I know you're great at e-commerce email. Um, he's okay if I refer them to you and just like give me a cut of whatever you make with them. And I say, cool, awesome. I'll give you 10% or 20 or 20% finders for your whatever referral fee. And that's it. So the reason this works is because instead of chase telling the client, sorry, can't help you. He says, look, I know a guy who's a perfect fit who can help you out. You know, he's going to do a great job for you. Um, I can't do it myself. I just wanted the bandwidth right now, but I trust this person and I know he's going to take good care of you. I says, okay, cool. Chase refers client to me. I work with the client. Everything goes great. I throw chase a referral fee. And then chase has nothing else to do. So that's also good because he's made some extra cash, but it's not requiring any extra effort on his end. So that's number one. Number two is the white labeling, which is for example, uh, again, same scenario, uh, client comes to chase and, um, he doesn't have the bandwidth for that client. However, he knows I can basically come in and quote unquote become a part of the team to help him out. So the client doesn't know this. Uh, but, uh, I basically come in as kind of like a temporary, I guess you could say contractor with chase's team. I helped them service that client, get that done, but it's just presented as this is coming from chase's agency, not from me. Right. Like I'm explaining that correctly. I think that's clear. Yeah. You nailed that. Yeah. So, so two ways. And this, the, the great thing about agencies is that they're probably dealing with a lot more clients than you're going to deal with as a freelancer. As a freelancer, most freelancers are going to max out with anywhere from one to like three clients. That's all you're going to handle on your own. Unless maybe you have a VA or maybe you have somebody like a junior copywriter underneath you. So with agencies, they're getting a lot more volume, right? So they might work with 20, 30, 50, a hundred clients and there are going to be those times where they cannot help the client with the, the, um, the team they have in place. So the white labeling or referring it out could make sense for them. And it's win-win for everybody because the clients gets what they need. Um, uh, chase gets what he needs with his agency and then I get what I need as a freelancer. So when, when, when three ways, uh, so that's the fourth way. And then the fifth way I want to talk about, uh, which kind of can, you can combine it with, um, with your cold outreach methods is the targeting. So for example, I was looking at pet food brands the other day. I went on Google, went to a few different websites, uh, started following some of these, uh, these brands on Facebook, signed up for the email list. And next thing I know I start seeing their ads. So they started targeting me on Instagram and my Facebook newsfeed. But then other similar brands are also going to start, um, showing up in your timeline. So that's awesome because it's like, it's like lead gen done for you. You really don't have to do anything else. Like all you have to do is some clicking and, uh, they're going to start following you online. So you're going to see the brands you just initially looked at plus their competitors. And this is great because it tells you a few different things. One, you know, they have a marketing budget because they're spending money on ads. Okay. This is a big issue that freelancers have, which is, well, I don't know if the client can afford me. Right. I don't know if they have a budget when I, you know, they're spending something. It's going to vary, but it might be 10, 20, 30% of their total revenue. So, you know, they're spending some money on marketing. Uh, number two, it tells you to actively trying to grow. Okay. Which is another good sign for freelancers because they're probably going to need help with copy and, uh, and other types of marketing often grow their business. So that's another good sign. And then number three, it makes it really easy for you to build your prospecting list. I talk about this a lot in my products, but you want to build a prospecting list instead of like starting from zero when you wake up in the morning, what you should do is you have a spreadsheet, uh, we're going to organize it any way you want, but you're going to have a spreadsheet and you're going to have a long list of hundreds of, um, companies, the decision makers, their email address, their website, uh, when you initiated contact, when you last followed up. And when you get retargeted, you're going to add these companies to your list. So, and then at that point, it's up to you, depending on what type of outreach method you're most comfortable with and what you want to use, um, to follow up with these clients and reach out to them. So it might be you decide you are going to just send the cold emails. But if they're on social media, what I'll do lots of times if I'm looking for clients is I'll just send them a message to like Facebook because so many of their teams probably going to respond and I'll say, Hey, you know, who's the, um, who should I talk to about freelance opportunities or who's in charge of marketing? Who's in charge of hiring? Um, who's, who's the decision maker here? And that usually they'll tell you. So that makes it way easier because that way you don't have to guess because what happens if you go, you go to websites many times is you'll use like hunter IO extension and it'll show you like eight different email addresses, you know, like, all right, now what, which one do I contact? It might not be clear. So that's the way to get ahead of it. Just talk to somebody on their team. I'll even call them. I'll even call the company up if I have to. And, uh, and find out who is that decision maker and then you can just reach out directly and that will save you time and just make the whole outreach process easier. So to recap, uh, as far as outreach methods goes for beginners. Okay. As you progress in your career, um, as your goals change, like for example, maybe you want to go from freelancer to building an agency. You might do different things to try to build up your business. But if you're just starting out, I would recommend the one called emails. Number two, job boards, Fiverr and Upwork are two big ones, but they're not the only ones. Okay. There's also a ton of groups of free groups on Facebook, for example, um, that are just packed with potential clients. And then there's just niche specific groups as well, like about e-commerce or Shopify stores or business coaches or fitness coaches. There's a group for everything. So I would look on those social media sites as well to find and see what you can find. Uh, so, uh, cold emails, job boards. Third is events. Oh, that's kind of like a supplementary method. You're not going to do that all the time, but you could keep an eye on them. Uh, for example, uh, quick funnels, they do the funnel hacking, live digital marketer does trafficking conversion. These are enormous marketing events. Um, Dan Kennedy has his events too. So these are enormous events with thousands of people and, um, and that can work as well. Uh, so third is events. Fourth is spillover. Okay. So with agencies, uh, they may have extra clients that they don't have the bandwidth to help right now. So that's a perfect, uh, way for you to fit in as a freelancer. Uh, and not just for agencies. Like for example, you might just know a more experienced copywriter who can't handle all his other clients coming his way. He can, he or she can refer you business too. Okay. That takes a little more work to find out who that person is. Right. But that can also happen where they just, they can't help all these clients coming in front of them so they can pass them along to you. And then fifth, uh, which is a way to just kind of, uh, automate your lead gen a little bit is retargeting. So the first thing you got to do is figure out your niche, right? Cause it's not going to really work if you're just all over the place. And I'm not like a huge stickler about niches, but it does help you get focused. So if you have an area where you want to focus, whether that's e-commerce stores or area even niche down a little further, right? E-commerce stores that sell, um, performance supplements or e-commerce stores that sell, um, pet food products or accessories. You know, if you just clear on who you want to reach, that's going to make the retargeting work much more effectively, right? So you're going to see a lot of those brands and you see a lot of those competitors and then you can add them, add them to your prospecting list. And you pretty much can have a constant supply of new leads that you can. Number one contact, but number two follow up with cause you're probably not going to close them in the first contact, right? So you're going to have people you can follow up with and just have a nice full pipeline of leads that you can, um, uh, using your prospecting or, you know, as long as you're looking for clients. Dennis, man, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for not holding anything back that the knowledge and the insight is immensely appreciated. Um, what is the best way for someone to connect with you or more about you, hire you, whatever someone wants to do. Um, with the information they got from today, what's the best way for someone to connect with you? Yeah, man. So I think after this, I'll give you some details. Maybe we can drop them in like a description or show notes. But, um, best thing you can do is you can do is Google me, Dennis Tamori. Um, you can find my website, you can find me in all the big social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, even LinkedIn. Uh, and then, uh, if you want to find out a little bit more about me and then how I work, how I work with clients or students, you definitely want to get on my email list. I also have a free telegram channel and, uh, I also my, my products and services. So I've got info products mostly for beginners right now about starting a freelance email copywriting business about finding clients and all those things about writing email copy. And, um, you can also work together one-on-one. So whether you like me to help you with, uh, growing your business, I typically work with, um, with business or fitness coaches or, uh, info publishers and there tends to be some overlap. So if you sell your own info products like eBooks, courses, workshops, uh, that's something I might be able to help you with as well. Awesome. All right. Well, give me your links. We'll drop them below and thank you so much for being here. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. Cheers, man.