3 Counter-Intuitive Ways to Attract More Clients & Double Your Revenue

It’s a sick feeling.

That sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you have your business in place, but the customers…well, the customers are just not pouring in like you pictured. It’s a common thread with companies of all shapes and sizes. And you’re not alone.

But how do you secure new client work without spending an arm and a leg on marketing?

In this article you will learn everything you need to know on how to attract more clients and double your revenue. We are talking open-the-floodgates type of insights and avenues.

The best part of it all? Everything we talk about will have your shoestring budget in mind.

Enough chit-chat.

Here are 3 ways to attract more clients and double your revenue…

1. The Power of an A/B Tested Website

A visitor on your website can mean a potential customer….sometimes, a lifelong customer.

You may have decent traffic coming to your website, but if they aren’t converting to paying customers, what’s the point?

Although traffic is important, it’s also important to convert this traffic to paying customers.

Enter A/B testing.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, A/B testing or “split testing” is comparing two different versions of a web page to figure out which version performed better.

Here’s a quick look at the power of A/B testing…

Dan Zarrella at HubSpot tested contact forms from 40,000 of their customers. The results were astounding.

He found that conversion rates improve by almost 50% when you go from 4 fields to 3.

That’s a game changing type of stat! Your revenue just increased by 50% simply by removing a field on your contact form.

This only solidifies the importance of design for your website. High quality UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) can be the difference between a customer inquiring or bouncing.

A/B testing can sound intimidating, but there are amazing tools like Optimizely who help make A/B testing a breeze.

Its ease of use and quick set-up made me a believer.

With Optimizely, you can easily split test button color, headers, layouts, navigation, etc…no coding knowledge necessary. The possibilities are virtually endless.

Let’s take a a closer look at the importance of increasing those conversion rates:

Say you have 1,000 visitors to your website in a month. 20 of those 1,000 visitors inquired to work with you. This comes to a 2% conversion rate. Nothing to smile about.

On the other side of the coin, let’s say in a month you had 500 visitors to your website. This time, you split tested everything and kept the highest performing results.

Now, 6% percent of these visitors inquire to work with you. That means 30 of those 500 visitors.

Let’s say each customer equals $500 in revenue (and for the sake of the example, everyone who inquired became a paying customer). With the extra 10 inquiries, you just gained an extra $5,000 in revenue–not even factoring in repeat business. That’s the type of impact A/B testing can make.

So…if you are looking for a quick, easy way to grow your business, start A/B testing your website today. You will reap the rewards in no time.

2. Be a leading voice on Twitter

The impact Twitter made on my business was unexpected to say the least.

I figured I would offer out good content, make connections and find business/design inspiration.

Although this was all true, I found some good client work along the way.

Twitter has brought in over $80k in projects over an 18 month span. That little blue bird can make quite the impact. More than what you might think. Here’s the thing: There needs to be a blueprint in place to make it “work”.

If you want the step by step, here is a more specific post on how I grew my Twitter audience to over 12,000 followers in 18 months.

The usual approach for my fellow designers is to post their own work hoping that someone would come along and pick up what they’re puttin’ down. On paper, it actually makes a lot of sense. But after some testing, this didn’t resonate with my audience.

The most effective method I’ve found in growing your Twitter audience comes down to one thing: Being a helpful resource.

Here is the dead-aim strategy (The Robin Hood Technique) which helped me go from 100 to 12,000+ targeted followers in about 15 months:

• Post high quality, shareable content and resources relevant to your industry
• Find a few influencers in your industry (gurus with high FT/likes per post)
• Follow the people retweeting/liking their content

That’s it. Not a lot of hocus pocus here.

Extra: This is a no-brainer, but make sure your posts are primarily picture (or video) heavy. Tweets with pictures are retweeted 35% more than than text-only tweets.

People want to grow their businesses, be inspired and learn new things about their niche. Providing the type of value mentioned above will give you more credibility as a leading voice in your space, and will organically bring in more client work.

It takes hard work, but trust me when I say that the benefits waiting on the other side are more than worth it.

3. Leads sent straight to your inbox with Thumbtack

When Courtright Design started out, Thumbtack was a life-saver.

Thumbtack is a cheap, easy way to bring in new service-based client work.

They sent graphic design and web design leads straight to my inbox–essentially, they do all the legwork for you.

If the project looked good, I would inquire and pay a nominal fee of around $4-$8. Now, they’re based around a “credits” system where you pay for a certain chunk of credits up front, then use the credits for leads you respond to.

I remember a lead costing $5.99 turn into $5,000+ of design work. You can see how the ROI (return on investment) can be pretty favorable. They were kind enough to feature Courtright Design on their blog as a case study on how to make the most out of their service.

I’ve come across forums where Thumbtack fell short for some people. It’s like anything else, though…it’s what you make of it and if you do your due-diligence to make it work.

Don’t expect your first, second or third inquiries to land that new client. My conversion rates were around 10%-20% meaning 1 or 2 out of every 10 leads I responded to actually turned into new client work.

Here are some methods to help get the most bang for your Thumbtack buck:

• Complete Profile: Fill out your company profile to its full extent. Add high quality pictures and detailed content on how you can help fill a need.
• Reviews: Ask past or current customers to write a review on your Thumbtack page (You get a custom link from Thumbtack)
• Your Mug: Have a professional picture of you, as opposed to your logo or a different image (They A/B tested this one)

All the items above add trust, value and credibility. Quite the triple-threat. These are just a few quick and easy ways to put your service over the top when potential clients are choosing a provider.

In conclusion, there are a lot of great avenues to attract more clients to your business.

The 3 methods above worked so well that my revenue has more than doubled as a result. You can see the exact same results.

If you are strapped for time, start with number #3, then move on to #1. These are great starting points. Twitter is more of that long-term investment strategy which can reap strong rewards over time.

Time to take action. If you implement one of the above strategies, shoot me an email–I would absolutely love to hear from you and how things are going.

Also, you can always reach out in the comments section below!

What are some methods you’re currently using to attract more customers?