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Where Do You Find Client Leads?
Hi everyone,
After five years working as a PPC specialist in an agency, I recently decided to go freelance. I have experience with large international clients and believe I can work very efficiently. Right now, I'm based in the EU and have about half of my capacity available, but I'm finding that there are fewer leads than I expected.
Where do you typically find PPC job opportunities or client leads? Are there any specific platforms, forums, or strategies you would recommend for finding clients in this field?
Thanks a lot for any advice or tips!
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1 Reply
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Simple question to answer: **What can you offer more than I (or any other PPC specialist) can?**
You’re competing against all of us – and I’m not saying we’re enemies, mind you, we’re *friendly* competitors – hundreds of people have a very similar profile to yours.
Why would anyone pick you over me?
* Is it your rates?
* Is it your work experience?
* Are you someone famous?
* Someone saw your post on reddit?
* Is someone recommending your work?
* You can speak different languages?
* Is it because I saw your ad in the local newspaper?
* Or is it that you’re known for making mean Sunday dinners?It’s the same as the job market, really: how do you stand out in a sea of specialists?
These are the questions I ask myself anyway when comparing my services to someone else’s, and the answers are for you to find, because what works for me won’t necessarily work for you. 🙂
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Upwork
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Before you go hunting on your own, start building up case studies of how *you* helped your current clients make a killing, specifically driving revenue growth YoY or customer base. You’ve been doing this 5 years,should be something there.
Happy hunting. Depending on which EU country, you might get overlooked – due to stigma or just inconvenient timezones for emergencies – when competing for overseas clients like us in Australia.
Friends of your current clients is a good starting point, who run businessea but don’t have PPC or need to replace their crap one.
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that’s a really weird question… it’s like, you’re a plumber and you’re asking people how can you fix your leaking pipes or whatever…
shouldn’t you be able to use your PPC skills (if you have them) to get leads / clients? i mean, what else is ppc for?
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Upwork/Fiverr/Facebook Groups/Instagram/Personal Branding
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Short-term strategy: I assume in these five years you have worked with clients from various industries. What were in your opinion the best ones? Let’s say for example Software or service-based companies.
When I started my freelance business, I searched for certain keywords to see which companies are actually running ads in that niche. When I saw any mistakes or potentials in their ads, I would reach out to the company and with a screenshot and offer them a free mini audit even if they are already working with a freelancer or an agency.
Long-term strategy: Positioning yourself as a thought leader and become a “go to exert” on LinkedIn. Very difficult these days, since a lot of people in the consulting business are publishing the same type of content. You also need to consistently do that to also maintain that status.
In addition to that, consider creating case studies and/or running webinars to generate leads. At this stage, look for a signal of interest instead of the sale.
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First of all I recommend you to niche down then market from where you like to start and build up a complete ICP for designated services and whom you like to target.
After defining your ICP now identity where commonly your type of IC is residing, hanging out and spending their time or building a community online.
In simple words you need to circle down whom you need as an ideal client and what that client of yours is facing right now which you can solve for them.
1. Identify who are the ideal prospects for you.
2. Identify what are the major and minor pain points.
3. Identify and craft a solution and offer for those prospects.After this how to reach and talk to those prospects.
For which we need to classify the leads first in 3 types.
1. Cold leads: the one don’t know you at all.
2. Warn leads: somehow interacted with you or know you as acquaintance.
3. Hot leads: already worked with you in any form and know you much better and trusted you and your processes. Friends and family will also be in this category.For each category we have to put a method of attraction, consideration and engagement through which we will interact with all of them per their convenience.
This is a raw start which can be further refine before, during and after implementation or testing.
Now if we understand this all then there are 2 ways to gather leads:
1. Inbound leads: the ones who approach you and submit an inquiry.
2. Outbound leads: the ones which are approached by us directly.Further then define and select a method of collecting inbound leads and outbound leads and how to interact with them respectively.
Parralley defines whether we will do it through manually and automated processes via tools.
Feel free to ask if you got any query regarding any of these.
Happy prospecting
Regards
Meer -
I’ve found quite a few great clients here on Reddit and other social media.
We usually have a (free) half hour consultation over Google Meet—I check out their existing Google Ads account (if any) and tell them upfront what we can do to improve their ROAS.
One potential client from NZ, he was managing it all himself and doing a great job. I told him that if he hired me I’d run it the same way 🙂
Another lady owns an e-commerce art clothing store. The previous agency managing her Google Ads really wasn’t effective—the conversion targeting was a mess and Performance Max was wasting tons of money on mobile apps and scammy parked domains.
Took that account over and turned things around in a couple of weeks. She’s one of my best clients now.
After evaluating another client’s business, I honestly told them that Google Ads might not be the most efficient move, and broke down some potential issues with product/market fit. A few days later they decided to hire me.
People come to you to solve a problem… if they feel you’re the best one to solve it—really solve it—you can have a client for life.
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I’m doing my website to run Google ads in my local area
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Web developers are constantly asked about Google marketing and very few offer this service. Those who do, don’t do it very well, those who don’t refer their clients to PPC folks.
Find some web devs in your area, ring them up and see if they’ be willing to partner with you. Offer them a referral fee for anyone they send their way and offer to send them referrals if you come across anyone who is looking for a website. Networking like this is probably THE best way to build a business.
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How will you get leads for your clients if you are not able to do it for yourself? 🙂
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Just go to creative agencies and try to sell ppc hours to their clients, they will be happy to upsell another product to their clients for a good fee
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There was a guy I use to work for, he would get tons of work from fivver, most of the account were small budget less than $1,000, but he would only charge $500 a month but he had over 40 accounts he was working on. And he was very good at his work too. Once u get enough rating on fivver u can get more work. But this was 5 years ago, idk how it is now.
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Your network both professional and personal
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We find it very easy to find leads in my agency. In fact I would go as far as to say finding customers is piece of cake, it is delivering work that’s the hard part.
Some of the stuff we do include
1. Running Google Ads for ourselves
2. IG Ads
3. Direct outreach on Reddit/LinkedIn
4. Organic content on IG, LinkedIn
5. Referrals from the dev agencies
6. Referrals from the customers
7. Now we decided to start building out our SEO too
Feel free to DM for tips
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