Another application landed in my inbox today, and … well … it’s not very impressive.
So I wanted to spend some time today talking about client-getting / job-landing strategies that actually work.
Most people assume that the only way to get a job/gig nowadays is to have a direct connection / get referred.
And in some ways, that’s true.
Especially because marketing is an unforgiving field, and if you don’t have any experience / skills, it makes things tricky.
I kinda avoided all of that by getting lucky when I successfully launched a Kickstarter campaign back in 2014.
A few days later, I started getting calls from other people looking to launch their campaigns, asking if I’d help them.
It slowly spiraled into a part-time gig where I was writing email campaigns for a well-known Slovenian copywriter…
And a few months later, a friend of mine introduced me to Matej, who gave me an incredible opportunity to learn and work at his DR company.
That’s where I learned most of my skills, so when I went back to freelancing, it was relatively easy to position myself as an authority by hosting webinars and sharing knowledge.
And that’s a great way of landing clients.
But obviously, when you’re just starting, you can’t do that…
So what I recommend you do is follow a piece of advice I learned from Justin Goff.
It actually involves cold mailing.
I know most people assume that it doesn’t work …
But it actually does if you do it the right way.
Before I get into that, let me tell you about the application I received today and why it’s so bad.
It’s the usual pitch … My name is XYZ, I’m looking for a job, I’ve got 100 years of experience in marketing, I studied this, I did that, I’m very motivated and hard-working, attached is my CV, can we jump on a call, blah blah blah.
Boooriing.
But besides being boring, it puts me into a position where I need to do a lot of work to figure out if this person can actually deliver on what I need.
Instead, what you should do is provide value in the first email.
Here’s what I mean.
Let’s say I want to land a new gig for an ecommerce business.
I’d write a new cart abandonment sequence for them for free.
Then I’d tell them that if they like it to let me know because I’d love to write more stuff for them.
That completely changes the position they’re in.
Instead of trying to figure out if I’m good or full of shit, they can start running my emails and see how they perform.
And guess what?
If the emails work, they know I can make them more money than they’re going to pay me – which is exactly what any business is looking for.
The bottom line is that you need to show, not tell.
Don’t make it a hassle for employers to hire you – make their job as easy as possible, and you’ll have a much better chance of getting your foot in the door.
