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A key question that you might face if you’re setting up a business which allows you to travel the world permanently, is how and where to get clients.
As with any business, the key to attracting new customers and clients is to build up relationships with prospects in your target market. The added challenge when you’re vagabonding at the same time is that you may never meet or even speak to these prospects.
This obviously means you have to find another way to build relationships with people in your target market – which is likely to be online.
The tools you need to do this may vary depending upon the type of business you run but these are the key tools we use to attract clients to our business – a branding and online marketing consultancy:
Blogs – we have 4 blogs each of which we use for different purposes.
LinkedIn – good for developing your professional network and building an expert profile in your specialist areas.
Industry forums – if you have specific target markets for your services or products, taking an active part in online networking forums where your prospects hang out can help build a profile and get your name ‘out there’ amongst the people you can help.
Twitter – another tool that can be used to connect with people, build up relationships and build your profile amongst a community.
One word of warning though; don’t join any of these services and communities and just ‘sell, sell, sell’, doing nothing but promoting your services or products. That’s a surefire way to turn people off and away from you and your business.
Remember that it’s all about building up relationships, developing your reputation and giving people a way to get to know, like and trust you…online.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Hiya: I work as a freelance tech writer and I travel often. I’m not permanently roaming, but for until recently where I lived was up for grabs every other month or so. I found the best way to keep my biz running was to line up as much work as possible while I was where the most work was (for me, that was my Seattle home) and then to stay in touch with those clients while I was traveling. If it looked like things were getting thin on the work front, I’d drop notes to my past clients, letting them know I was available. Rarely did they care where I was at the time. Finding NEW work while traveling was always difficult for me – perhaps it’s the nature of my work – but landing new projects from established clients has never been a problem.
April 1st, 2010 at 11:19 am
[...] course, there are still other strategies to drum up new business. Lea covered some of these in May, including resources such as: industry forums,Twitter, blogs, and [...]