You know, the hardest part of any new venture is figuring out how to find your customers. Oh, I’ve got lots of books on how to start this or that business, how to market, how to do sales and promotion…but books just don’t do it for me. They’re comforting, in a way, at least they give you some information that you have at your fingertips but they usually don’t go far enough. If you know what I mean.
How do you really find your customers? The books have all kinds of ideas but they all seem so nebulous and geared toward attracting the attention of the big companies. Which is great if you want to get in line with every other freelancer out there. But what if you’re sick and tired of the big companies? What if you want to work with little ones that you can develop an actual relationship with? How do you find them? That’s my dilemma and yours too no doubt.
They say to determine your market. Ok, yah that makes sense. But what’s your market? Do you focus on things that you like to do? Places that you like to go? Do you go stick a business card on a bulletin board in several places and hope someone sees it? Do you send out scads of emails to small companies who have never heard of you and, like me, delete it as junk mail the minute in comes in? Sigh! Email has become like the excess junk you get by snail mail and it’s just as annoying. I don’t want to be one of those.
But then what? Lot’s of questions and at this point few answers. Well, I guess I’ll just have to do some more hard research and get back to you on that.
Stay tuned.
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