Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. Or, perhaps to be a bit more politically correct, busier than a new mother with triplets (although with the Octomom and all…).
I started Life Is Local, my web design and local marketing business in earnest about five months ago. And when I started, I decided to use this blog as the focal point of all my sales and marketing efforts, with no advertising whatsoever and the only “marketing” is some search engine optimization (SEO) for the website (which is easy with WordPress).
Despite the lack of advertising and marketing, I’m working on six different web design projects right now, with a possibility of working on a very large project by partnering with another web firm. So where did all this business come from?
NETWORKING!
To me, networking has always had kind of a negative image. I’ve never really been someone who joins social groups just to drum up new business. I don’t like going around and handing out business cards, and I’m not all that interested in local politics. Networking has always seemed to me to be more of a pain than it was worth.
But I’ve changed my mind about networking because I’ve changed my approach. My new attitude started when I decided to build a website for a buddy of mine, who is a local builder, for free. That’s right… I did the work for free because I truly believed I could help out a friend, and I wanted to get some experience building websites with WordPress in the way I had always envisioned.
And you know what? My buddy loved the site. He loved it so much, he asked if I could do a website for his band. And because I liked the band, I was more than happy to do that website for free as well.
And then, a relative of the builder told me she was self-publishing a children’s book, and because she had seen what I had done with the builder’s band website, wanted to get some advice on building her own website. I told her I’d be happy to set up a WordPress blog for her, and built her website. For free. And if you’re keeping score, that’s three websites that I built free, which is not a great way to start out a new business. But what I got was a lot of experience building websites without the pressure of getting paid.
And then, something strange happened. I started to get jobs based on the relationships I had built doing all of this work for free:
- The author’s father had a business website that was old and ugly, and he wanted me to update and modernize his website. I got paid for my first web design project! Not a lot, but it was nice to get paid for all the hard work I’d been doing for free.
- The Realtor who sells the builder’s custom homes hired me to revamp their website and improve their search engine rankings.
- A friend of the author hired me to upgrade his real estate blog for the latest version of WordPress and change the theme to make use of widgets.
- Two of the real estate agents from the Realtor’s office hired me to do personal pages.
- A friend of mine from a past company hired me to do websites for his two restaurants, and is talking to me about creating Facebook Pages for the restaurants.
- A friend of the real estate blogger wanted me to finish up his own real estate agent blog because he was having difficulty with WordPress.
- A local insurance agent, and a friend of both the builder and Realtor, hired me to revamp his website and improve the search engine rankings. And, because this insurance agent knows just about everyone in town, I’m giving him a special discount to help me meet some of the local movers and shakers.
- Finally, the builder’s band played a charity event for a local organization, and one of the organizers has a company that builds websites for libraries. Because she knew I developed in WordPress, and one of her current proposals is for a library that wants a website with a content management system (CMS), she asked for my advice in creating the proposal based on using WordPress as the CMS. And if she wins the bid, I’ll be doing some work with her company (which could lead to even more work).
All of this business came about because I did a couple of websites for free. It certainly helped my case that the builder quickly claimed the top search spots in Google for most of the keywords related to his business, but with WordPress and just a little bit of work, local search engine rankings are not particularly hard to secure.
Through networking, and a few free jobs, I turned these personal relationships into quite a lot of business. And all of my new friends continue to push Life Is Local to a whole new set of people that I might never have met without them.
If you’re just starting out your own web design or marketing business, spend some time getting to know, and helping out, a few key people. It might sound counter productive to do some work for free, but this can often lead to a lot of business down the road, especially if you’re doing business for the right people.
