How to get inbound clients as a copywriter

Hey there, happy Friday!

Welcome to Edition 67 of Alex In My Inbox.

Alex In My Inbox is a?weekly copywriting series where I share interesting, actionable, and hilarious copywriting tips from "Alex."

Alex is an anonymous copywriter who shares these tips with me so I can share them with you.??

Today, Alex has an email about how to get copywriting clients to come to you, instead of having to send 100 cold emails a day and hope for the best.?

Here’s the scoop:

But first, here's some info on my vendor of the week:

When I heard the skincare brand Topicals simultaneously decreased their product return rate while increasing their sales from customer support by 78%, my thinking changed.

Like most, I thought of CS as a cost center rather than a revenue driver.??

What if we could turn CS into a revenue channel & treat it like another marketing channel?

I'm talking about a team supported by automation that can help customers quickly find answers to their questions and guide them to specific areas of the site.

For Ecom Brands, this is the best replacement we have for in-store sales reps.

And this extra support goes a long way.

This allowed Topicals to:

- Reduce their return rate significantly

- Increase their sales from customer support by 78%

- Increase their customer satisfaction score to 4.8/5

- Handle 69% of customer queries using automation

Turn CS into a revenue machine.

Now onto today's content:

Dear Chase,

I have never liked sending cold emails.?

It’s always been the bane of my existence.?

It’s kinda humiliating, and it makes you feel weird reaching out to strangers. My parents always told me not to do that.

But it’s a necessary thing at the beginning.?

You can’t just throw up a copywriting portfolio on a website and expect people to randomly find you online and hit you up to work with them.?

Doesn’t work that way.?

I have always kinda been a believer that you shouldn’t need cold email to get clients after you’ve gotten your first 4-5 clients.?

I sent cold emails pretty consistently through 2020, a little bit at the beginning of 2021, and then I stopped completely in March of 2021.?

I relied on my network and my “brand” to get money into my bank account.?

This did NOT mean that I was trying to grow on social media and tweeting about copywriting all day.?

When I was making $20-30k a month as a copywriter, I had like 300 followers on Twitter.?

This is what I recommend if you’re trying to get inbound deals coming your way so you don’t have to send cold emails:

1) Utilize affiliates/referrals.

People who have connections in any industry will be more than happy to make a couple thousand dollars per month by sending you work, especially if you do a good job.?

You have to be able to recognize who the key players are, and make sure they feel incentivized to bring you more projects.?

Ideally, your clients should be like a Russian doll.?

If you get one good client, you can tap into their network and offer them 10% of what you bill the clients they send you, for the lifetime of the client.?

Once you’re making $5-6k a month, you should be optimizing for finding clients that are going to have an insane network for you to tap into.?

You’re no longer starving, which means you have some room to push really hard on high-quality leads that can get you access to more leads.?

Social media is great for this. You don’t have to be famous, you just have to be visible.?

Reach out to big Twitter/IG accounts via DMs and push really hard to impress them.?

2) Reach out to other employees at the companies you work at.?

When I was mostly working with e-com brands and agencies, there are a ton of people who work there who are way more experienced than you.?

All of the senior marketers, media buyers, designers, etc, probably know someone who needs a copywriter and would hire you.?

You can phrase it like this:

“Hey X, I’m kinda bored these days and I’m looking to take on a couple more copy projects right now. Who do you know right now that could use someone like me?”

Obviously, the better your reputation with the company, the better.

There are people I’ve worked with that I’ve sent gigs to, because I know they do good work and I want them to make more money.?

Most company cultures will be supportive of this, especially if you’re a copywriter.?

Everyone knows that copywriters are all usually looking for extra work, and it likely won’t distract from your main thing.?

3) Let everyone know you’re looking for work.

When I first started copywriting, I was not quiet about it by any means.?

I told literally everyone I knew that I was looking for work and I wanted to take on more clients.?

They could see I was hungry.?

Family, friends, etc.?

This may be a shot in the dark for a lot of people, but I did know some people who knew some people.?

Friends from university, family friends, distant uncles who run businesses, etc.?

Everything matters.?

You will grow way, way faster if you’re able to get the word out to as many people as possible.?

What do you think, Chase?

Did I miss anything??

Let me know.?

Yours truly,

Alex.

Sent from my Megaphone (I’m using it to tell everyone I’m a copywriter)

I hope you enjoyed this week's Alex In My Inbox edition.

Also, next week I'll be doing a webinar with Adam Robinson, the mastermind behind?Retention.com , who will share what the fastest-growing DTC brands are doing to explode their email and SMS collection.?Register for free.

Have a great weekend,

Chase