You Have Only 4 Ways To Get Clients As A Copywriter 🤝🏻

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Getting clients is the hardest part of being a freelance copywriter.

Before I started my business, I read Alex Hormozi’s $100 Leads to learn how to get customers.

Alex has built, scaled, and sold multiple businesses in different industries, generating millions of dollars in revenue. He is also creating great content (you should follow him!).

I also studied his Lead Generation Course and took notes.

My Notes from the Lead Generation Course

Alex’s framework helped me clear out the noise and understand that there are only four ways to get clients:

1. Warm Outreach

2. Cold Outreach

3. Free Content

4. Paid Ads

   

   Screenshot from Alex’s course

How copywriters can use this framework to get clients

1/ Warm outreach: get your first 5 clients

This method is the fastest way to get your first client.

Make a list of every person you know who might need your services.

Include entrepreneur friends, previous employers, and your uncle who has that small business. These people need help making marketing materials, landing pages, social media content, and so much more.

Don’t know anyone? Think again.

Go over your:

• Phone contacts

• LinkedIn connections

• Twitter Followers

Gather a list and start sending messages.

From the Lead Generation Course

Reaching out to people is a great practice for copywriters. You learn how to hook the prospect and make him take action (reply / buy your service).

Start by acknowledging something they recently did (by looking at their feed), then pitch your services.

Tip from Alex: never pitch the services directly to them. Only ask them if they know someone else who needs these services. It alleviates the pressure to say yes.

2/ Cold outreach - the ultimate copywriting skill

I understand Warm Outreach isn’t going to work for everyone. It didn’t work for me because I had very little network when I started.

Cold outreach is how I got my first client.

Mastering cold outreach is amazing because it means you can get clients no matter who you know or what business you decide to start in the future.

And like warm outreach, cold outreach is how copywriters put their skills to the ultimate test. If you can get people to buy your own service, you have proven to yourself and the client that you are, in fact, a good copywriter.

First, gather a list of leads - understand where your clients hang out.

• If they are on Facebook groups, you join a bunch of them and DM 5 people every day.

• If you are on LinkedIn, you find their email with the software and send them an email.

Figure out how to reach your target customers and then:

Personalize and give big, fast value.

This person doesn’t know you. You have to prove yourself and do it fast.

Personalize: Use the first line of your message to acknowledge something specific about this person—recent accomplishment, change, or promotion.

Value: Show them you understand their exact problem. Offer free products to help them achieve something they are struggling with.

Keep it short and format it to make it look appealing.

Example: Look how copywriter Annie Maguire used this cold email to get one of her first clients.

3/ Free content - long-term success

Eventually, you want people to come to you. Attracting opportunities is what every freelancer strives for. Here is how you start:

1. Pick a channel: The best writing channels are Substack, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but you should write on the platform where your audience hangs out. If it’s Instagram, publish there.

2. Choose your niche: the narrower, the better. You don’t want to talk about Personal Development—too many big players are in that space. Think fitness for stay-at-home moms or productivity for parents.

3. Publish every day: practice. Write something valuable and learn how to get your knowledge out there.

Gathering an audience will take time, so it’s better to start now.

4/ Paid ads - save for later

I don’t use this channel (yet), but it’s easy to understand.

• If your audience is on Facebook - you run FB ads.

• If your audience is on LinkedIn - you run LI ads.

You can scale big with paid ads when you have the money.

You simply choose your best-performing free content and turn it into an ad to show it to more people.

Most beginners don’t have the money to spend on ads, so I suggest leaving this method for after you have made some progress with outreach and content creation. You don’t want to rely on this strategy to succeed.

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Where to start?

I’ll share what worked for me:

1. Start with warm outreach and contact everything you know. Follow up 1-2 times.

2. After contacting everyone you know, focus on sending 5 cold emails a day.

3. Once you get into that rhythm, choose 1-2 channels (I chose Substack and Twitter) and write 1 piece of content every day.

4. Continue until a client is found.

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With time, you will start developing systems for these processes, and it will become easier.

I use tools like Buffer to schedule posts and Apollo to find email addresses from Linkedin. I’m able to post more content and reach out to more people with these.

If you want me to elaborate on these automation tools, let me know in the comments below 👇🏻