What you'll learn
- Search LinkedIn posts, not just peopleBob's first two clients came from a freelance platform. Then he searched LinkedIn content, sorted by date, for posts like "looking for a Google Ads Specialist" with a long list of keywords, and that got him his next three.
- Pitch companies that can't find a hireMy first client came from Indeed. I emailed companies whose Google Ads job had been open for a few months and offered to help on a freelance basis until they found someone. I ended up working with them for about a year and a half.
- Spread your revenue across clientsWhen Bob's big interim job ended, it felt like half his revenue could disappear at once. Since then he says no to interim jobs and keeps a mix of bigger and smaller clients, so losing one never hurts too much.
- Give the plan away in the sales processWe both start with an audit. Bob writes a full game plan for free, and I do a short audit of the most important parts, like campaign structure and conversion tracking, then present it on a call. Clients trust you when they see you're focused on what they actually need.
- Let go of the clients that drain youBob ended contracts with three or four bigger clients that weren't a good fit. He gave each of them a reasonable amount of time and other Specialists to consider, and had more headspace the very next day.
About this episode
If you want to go freelance, the first question is usually where your first clients will come from.
So Bob and I go through how we each got ours, while we were both still working at an agency.
In this episode, we go through:
- Bob’s first clients from a freelance platform and LinkedIn’s content search
- How I found my first client on a job board, after my agency told me I wasn’t allowed to freelance on the side
- Why Bob stopped taking interim jobs, and why I never worried much about losing a client
- Inbound vs outbound, and how we sell with an audit and a game plan
- Firing bad-fit clients, pricing, and the invoices that never got paid
- Why Bob works with clients in so many different verticals
We both sell the same way: as consultants first. If we’re not the right fit for a client, we’d rather send them to someone else.
Chapters
Mentioned in this episode
Full transcript
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00:00so what was your your reaction to I was pissed I was really angry I was really pissed I was like I was already thinking about leaving and then they told me I couldn't do it and if you tell me that I can't do something I'm gonna do it so you cannot tell me what I can I cannot do it so it must be a difficult kid yeah for sure yeah absolutely ask my mother ask my girlfriend ask my brother ask everybody thank you okay GM gmgm welcome back to the PPC Mastery podcast this is episode number two three three well basically number two but yeah wait small intro exactly so in this episode we're going to talk about how to acquire customers or clients as a freelancer as an agency maybe as well and I think we want to do that by explaining what our stories are from getting clients for ourselves and some strategies in how you can get clients as a freelancer but also how to retain them maybe we'll cut it up in in the next episode talk about that as well but yeah I think today we're just going to be talking about our stories uh we've got our our clients how we do sales business types Etc so maybe you can kick it off with the story of how did you get your first client my first client and my first client well that's that's a while ago yeah I guess my first client came in seven years ago maybe even eight I think eight years from from from today and actually my first client came in from a freelancing platform called freelancer doesn't know maybe you maybe you know
01:37the the freelancing platform so when I first started out freelancing I basically started out freelancing as a side hustle so I was working at the ADC full-time and then in the evening hours and in my weekends I started out freelancing I think I explained that in a previous episode and I got my first client through a platform called freelancer.l and that's where a lot of companies especially small size companies basically create an effort where they are saying hey I'm looking for a online marketing Specialist or a Google Ads specialist in particular for this case this is my budget this is what I need and you were able as a member of the platform to basically send over a offer and you had to compete with other Google Specialists as well so I got my first client I think my first two clients from that particular platform where I basically load both my offers because I just wanted I wanted to start off getting some traction I wanted to get in some clients some names and some experience already um so yeah it was it's kind of boring but this platform really really helped me to to to kick-start my freelancing journey so after I got my first clients that's when I started experimenting with some other organic some organic strategies as well so what I'm really fond of and I'm I'm still fond of that strategy is using LinkedIn organic search so a lot of people are still not using that tactic properly and I was I guess one of the
03:16first ones that really leveraged the search function within LinkedIn where you can actually search on content instead of people where you can then sort sort based on the the the the post date of someone that posted hey I'm looking for a Google ad Specialist or I'm looking for a sea Specialist or a Google Ads or AdWords freelancer so I had this big list of all of the keywords that people could possibly use inside of their LinkedIn post yeah and that's where I got my next three clients from and from that point I had like five or six clients already which came in sort of organic at least I didn't have to pay a lot of money for them to to to get in contact with them to acquire them yeah so yeah those are my first clients really interested in how you got your first client yeah it's uh sort of similar but not exactly the same but I went on indeed which is indeed.nel yeah job board in the Netherlands and I looked I was still working at agency so I was also trying to get my first freelance clients on the side and actually they told me that I was not allowed to do it so really yeah I asked them can I yeah I'm thinking about doing like a little side hustle and kind of do it and they they went to talk about it with the board and everything and then they told me first they thought they said yeah I think it's going to be fine and no problem and then once I actually landed the client I said yeah I I got a client I didn't mention the name but they they then told me that I wasn't allowed to do it yeah so was it because of a conflict of interest or what was the reason I think probably something
04:53like that yeah like I'm working at agency see and they don't want the people to work with clients because potentially they could work for them as well but yeah anyway I don't know exactly the reason but I did it anyways yeah I was like [ __ ] this pissed yeah I was really angry I was really pissed I was like I was already thinking about leaving and then they told me I couldn't do it and if you tell me that I can't do something I'm gonna do it so you cannot tell me what I can I cannot do so so it must be a difficult kid yeah for sure yeah absolutely ask my mother ask my girlfriend ask everybody yeah no but yeah I was I was furious and I and I thought yeah suck it I'm gonna do it anyway I'm gonna freelance full time I'm gonna free less full-time but first the client that I got was through indeed which is a job job board in the Netherlands for those who don't know and I looked for jobs that were already open for a few months regular job opening so not freelance positions but just regular jobs and then I emailed them asking like okay I I see you have this job opening I can maybe help you out on a freelance basis I had a reduced hourly rate as well back then and I said maybe I can I can help you out until you find someone to come work in your team yeah and as you know the Google Ads Market is still very very hot yeah and it's hard to find good Specialists so I ended up working with that first client which was lead stores from come out us I ended up working with him for I think a year year and a half or so until they finally until we finally split it up so that was that was the story of my first client did you kept working for them when they even hired a Google specialist when they
06:32found one or did you basically end your contract when they found a full-timer yeah exactly I ended the contract before before that was all the reasons why why I left there but yeah yeah in the end they ended up hiring someone so it was still a one one and a half year period to do okay and it was really nice because they allowed me to work with them on the side when I was working at agency I got trust and confidence that this this was actually actually possible and then after that I started to get more clients through like you said LinkedIn as well got a recruiter that reached out to me with the with the big job I think I mentioned in the last podcast that ring and then after that it was all all inbound so that they did the recruiter try to hook you in with a job offer or no freelance freelance yeah interim okay yeah yeah you just said yeah I have this interim job 32 hours per week or 36 which was really big and he asked if I was available and I actually quit my job on that day so I was available yeah I'm available let's go it was meant to happen yeah exactly exactly so they should do a lot of interim work in the past in the beginning or did you find a lot of clients like a mixed bag of clients low value clients high value clients right from the start how did your client composition portfolio look like yeah the first client that I got was that stores like I said which is pretty big eight figures company yeah a lot of different stores in all over Europe that was the first first one then I got ring ring is also a really big brand like they were already bought by Amazon for I think billion dollars or so like a few years ago yeah before a few years before that yeah and they were at shark in shark tank so I had already a portfolio of big clients even though it was small
08:10portfolio but then I threw lead stores I was actually working with a Google team and this was the best Google team that I've ever worked with I know everybody's always hating on the Google reps and oftentimes Riley so but this team led by Axel and later on Julia was in that team as well they they really helped me because Axel referred me then from that stores to X there and exter I'm still working with them now and yeah it's so so much fun to work with these guys yeah yeah for my biggest client nice we have to talk a little bit off off camera they're great people yeah yeah and he helped me he referred me to exter and then my portfolio grew and then you know everything started to spiral into more and more clients from there so I think referral was really important but those type of clients that I got from that Google team were all like those big ones you know so I had a few smaller clients as well but my portfolio was usually already filled up because all of the clients were like really Big Spenders so you you had to make a lot of hours in on a weekly basis already right so you couldn't handle tell my last clients no exactly I think at the most I had like you pick one five or six yeah exactly maybe seven sometimes with a few smaller ones next to it but that was that for you then because I know you had at some point like 20 plus clients or something no I think close to 20 on my highest point my close to burnout Point yeah highest point were like lowest points yeah so my my path when the yeah went a little bit differently yeah so I started out freelancing in the evening hours
09:48that's when I managed to get like up to six seven clients from all of these organic inbound like platforms like LinkedIn freelancer.nl I even started out a small Google Ads campaign for myself which also worked great but once I made the switch from basically quitting my job full time at the agency and then starting out freelancing full-time myself I still had this gap of I guess two three days a week I had like two or three three days a week filled with these clients and that's when I was offered a interim job at a big agency in the southern part of the Netherlands and that's when I moved over there and actually I first started out on a two-day week basis then managed to grow to a three day a week basis because they really needed the amount of hands that like the very big Dutch clients that that well they had to run the ads for they didn't have the Personnel they really had problems hiring and had to basically educate some other Google Ads Specialists on a job as well so that's when I took the remaining part of the freelance clients that I started working for and moved them to my weekends I was like yeah I can do this extra day a week no problems so that's when the journey started yeah but that job basically ended at one point in time I worked there for I guess seven eight months so quite a long period for an interim job or not depends what you're used to a bit of for me was a long period and after
11:29that once the interim job ended I was like oh wait a minute I'm now used to these sick revenues right from the start basically working my ass off six days seven days a week and if one of this bigger interim jobs just well disappears then that's a big hole in your in your revenues on the revenues and not just looking at the the the the clients in particular the freelance clients I had personally that was already doing great revenues on the month already but it didn't felt that way it was like okay if they stop right now that's a 50 cut in my revenue and I do not want to to to have this again in the near future so that's when I said no to every single interim job available since I wanted to have this mixed bag of high value low value clients to basically spread around the the risks and really happy with that decision ever since so yeah how did you do that because you you you worked for all of the bigger clients until well last year recently yeah yeah weren't you afraid of these these well these risks not really because I think this is also the difference between between us and how we how we look at risks to speak about this for a whole episode is it actually quite an interesting topic I think but no I I always looked at it from a perspective of if a client goes away yeah then I always had the feeling that I can get a new client within a week yeah to some people that might sound arrogant but I'm just being
13:06realistic looking at how the Google Ads Market is and if you are a good Google ad specialist and you already have like a name if you're new then of course you need to build up your portfolio but I had already worked at an agency for two and a half years with some connections yeah with 50 plus clients there at connections then I was freelancing I had built up built up really nice connections people were referring me I was already saying no to a lot of jobs because I was just full so I was either saying no or pushing them to other Google Ads Specialists so I never really had that feeling of oh what if one goes away because I always felt like I can just fill it up yeah and also sometimes it's nice if a client Falls away because then you have a little bit more time to think to see clearly where you want to go do I actually even want to work as many hours that I'm that I'm working all these things so sometimes other people have the have to make these decisions for you exactly yeah that's how it works yeah for sure but you you mentioned that your your focus is a lot on on inbound would you yeah what would you recommend to to somebody starting out now maybe somewhere because we got these messages a lot from people that are working agencies with the same background as us and then they say yeah I'm working here now two three four five years how can I start freelancing what would you recommend to them yeah I I really think it's a personal thing I absolutely despise doing sales outbound sales that's the one thing I hate most so I I haven't done any outbound sales at all I haven't done any outbounds at all to to obtain clients at least so everything that I did was basically
14:43folks around inbound so I think that's the it's the best strategy because there's already some great intent at people that are looking to work with you already so a lot of people contacting me right now they are already sold on the idea I want to work with Bob where I want to work with mouse instead of instead of when you are the guy reaching out to them by telephone by mail hey I'm this Google specialist how are your ads doing can I perform a free audit I'm not saying that doesn't work but it's not just my kind of style yeah so if you want to be aggressive and if you want to grow real fast then I think doing outbound sales is a great tool but you have to be the kind of person to do it yeah and I'm really off the camp of consultative selling so I really like to be that honest consultant that sells based on the stuff the client actually needs and that has worked wonders for me so I'm not doing I haven't changed anything at all because that was my success formula and what does that look like for you what do you mean with consultative selling so it's not really looking at the stuff you you you can sell or you can do for the account oh this client isn't doing YouTube or this client isn't doing upper funnel at all or they're not doing remarketing or they should do a BMX when it isn't a logical thing to do for them that's not how I look at accounts or proposals I look at well what are you doing right what's going what's going wrong where can you improve and basically that was my plan I created a game plan on all of the
16:22specific Parts within the accounts and within the strategy within the tactics where the account could improve on and I basically wrote this long strategy game plan document which basically gave the information where I gave the information free yeah free of charge because I haven't I I didn't sold on that specific moment but since since I did it this way it was yeah clients immediately trusted me like oh this guy is is doing the best for me and for my account instead of just running through a list of hey I can we can do this a profano campaign where I can buy you a million impressions for 5 000 Euros or if you want to go for 5 million it costs a thousand Euros per month that's not how I how I like to approach things so I really I was really honest with myself and with the clients and basically then looked at my game plan okay if I want to roll this out for this client what is it going to cost in terms of hours what was what was my hourly rate back then back then I was working with early rates and fixed fixed fees as well yeah and it just yeah it just worked for me yeah so I haven't changed it at all and how did you kick that off with the audit yeah and then yeah always audits yeah unless of course an account is new but almost nine of ten times an account has in history or they have done some Google Ads in the past yeah yeah that was my target audience as well people that that had some knowledge of Google Ads where it could easily spark spar with that was a great yeah great potential client great clients to chat with as well instead of well a
18:00client that doesn't know anything about Google Ads but you have to tell them every single thing yeah so yeah yeah and I I think the nice thing about inbound as you also describe it is exactly the same for me I don't want to do cold emails or cold calling I really hate it I don't even want to do regular calls anytime at all and it's not a great post by Alex Becker right yeah yeah let's get on a call nope [ __ ] you yeah I I tried to limit my calls to as few as possible in a week but it's different when you do inbound inbound because then as you said people are already sold on you and then the sales quote-unquote call is not even a sales call it's just it's consult yeah as a consultant you have to discover whether you want to actually work with them and if you can help them that's also the thing because I've also had many cases where I felt honestly like not I'm not the right guy for you right now maybe they were starting out I don't work with starting my brands that are starting out only what you also said like bands that are more into the scaling side and then I said I'll be honest I'm not the the right guy for you right now I will forward forward you to someone who might be able to help you that creates trust as well that you're not just in it to grab all the money that you can but you're also being honest in who you want to work with and and yeah and I think that's the best strategy for the long run because if you just grabbing money every way you can you end up with a client portfolio uh that every morning when you open your empty you're like oh man I'm I do not want to work for this account yeah why did I why did I sold this guy yeah so yeah I I had these moments in the past but I really learned from these kinds of choices in the first
19:38couple of I guess three years because I was so tied to the revenue stream like oh I this client isn't a great fit and it's it's costing me a lot of energy to work on these accounts to chit chat with these with these owners uh but yeah I couldn't I couldn't stop because of the revenue yeah that's that's when I well I think three years ago I I started to make a shift because I was working towards this burnout I was like okay now I have to make some room I have to scratch away some some of the clients yeah what did you fit yeah what did you do then because you you noticed okay I'm going in the wrong direction moving towards potentially a burnout what were the the steps that you took then to optimize your client portfolio I'm really a guy that just grabs a hammer a sledgehammer yeah so sometimes I have these these moments where I just grab like a big Sledgehammer I'm like okay this is I'm going the wrong direction I have to I have to destruct some parts of my business it's funny because we you well actually you call yourself Bob the Builder because you are you are our product Builder but you're also about The Destroyer oh yeah I am I am yeah I am yeah yeah something in my mind just just breaks I'm like [ __ ] this yeah I'm just going through something I'm just going to make the switch right now and that's when I just yeah ended contracts with like three or four of my bigger clients that I didn't have great fit with that and they were like okay no problem thanks for referring us to
21:15another specialist we will work it out yeah and I was I was not like okay I'm going to stop today because I can't take it anymore I was like this is my plan I would like to end the contract with you here are some options that you can consider I'm I will give you the a reasonable time to to find someone else so the account is basically getting the attention it deserves and that worked wonders I think for the client but also for me so that really gave me I think I had like two or three of these moments in the past and they just give you instant headspace like instant the next day you're like oh I should have done this half a year a year earlier yeah yeah yeah so looking at the the back to the consultative selling because you also did this and I'm looking at our our notes how did you create your your plans you also started with an audience yeah same thing how did you salt people on these plants yeah also same I people reach out to me because I I'm doing inbound focusing on inbounds or providing a lot of value on LinkedIn showing my my skill sets and my my expertise and my experience and then yeah they reach out and I usually start off with an audit it's not always a complete audit because audits if you do a full entire audit it can really take you like two days yeah of work but I do like a condensed version where I look at the most important things and you if you get some experience in Google Ads you'll quickly see what the status is the way you can improve where you can improve like really quickly exactly you look at the campaign structure conversion tracking then you usually already find a few things and then I put that in the in
22:52in the audit in the presentation and then I get on a call with the client to do to discuss it to present it to them and then if they like it then we move on to how we can work together and then we decide on okay how many hours do I think that I need okay then we start to think about the the fee and I used to always work with hourly fee but now the last clients that I've worked with is a combination of fixed fee plus percentage of spend so that I can grow with them and all clients that I would work with in the future is also that way but I'm definitely not against hourly rates I see some people hating on on it but yeah it's not really scalable but let's be honest if you can create invoice of 40 hours a week yeah and you can ask 125. yep exactly but even if even if it's 60 Euros per hour I started at 50. it's still four times the money agency exactly exactly so no I I that's that's how I how I did it and so so did you also worked with terms and conditions in your not really probably I should have probably done that more but yeah I just I just sent them sort of like a freelance agreement yeah that's the main the bare minimum legally what you need to do sometimes I didn't even do it because I was just like let's just let's just go let's just work so maybe that was a little bit too much on built on trust yeah tell us something about your risk management yeah that's true that's true true yeah but no I never really had contracts in terms of minimum amount of time or anything like that I was I was never into that and in the agreement it was just only like the price and yeah of course like if if somebody wanted to stop then we had like a few days of
24:29maybe a week or so of a term that we needed to to for a Handover or something but I never really did anything like that they shouldn't count any any problems in your freelance periods legal wise only one way you thought oh this is this is basically where I needed my T and TNC yeah only one time the guy didn't pay me and then that was that was really painful in the end yeah I think it was like total of 7K or so oh wow yeah yeah it's not like 50 Euros or 500 Euros or something so it was a lot of money I've just came twice as well scammed yeah yeah what happened yeah I was hired by a really really weird Eco webshop that was kind of weird they also did some some hennep hemp yeah they did some some ham stuff where they sold droplets and some some food substitution stuff and there was really a well a vegan based Niche web shop they were quite early in their move they started out I guess four years ago and they came in from my Google Ads campaign that I was running back then they worked wonders for me in case the listeners might interest them I paid like 200 250 euros per lead I had a close rate of I guess 60 percent so well a sale cost me like 400 450 euros completely fine and they also came in from this Google Ads search campaign and I went to Utrecht where they were based and well they they seemed okay so they just needed help on the spot setting up the campaigns because they had some
26:07problems with their revenues and basically I already saw red flags because the CEO any management also well were involved in every single meeting and I really wanted to know every single detail every single metric and what we could could improve upon yeah but yeah I was I was beginning I was still a noob yeah the freelancing world world so so yeah naive so I didn't see that happening but I went there for I think maybe eight times Well spread over to three months so the first invoice was two and a half K somewhat like that and as I I always send my invoices after yeah the work has been completed and then I usually just just use a payment term of 14 days or 30 days and I guess this one was on for 14 days so after six six weeks basically the the first six weeks are basically risk because you impose afterwards and then you have to payment the payment terms yeah so if a client doesn't pay or doesn't want to pay the sixth the the first six weeks are just gone in terms of investment of your time so after two months I started to worry hey this invoice isn't getting paid and I wasn't able to to contact them by phone by email they ignored me um and I went to the the office a few more times three four more times they were already acting a little bit well weird management was already dropping off sitting in the back I was a little
27:44bit ignored so that's when I felt hey something is wrong here so yeah these invoices they eventually they weren't paid no no they weren't paid even if I had even when I had great terms and conditions yeah I also put a lawyer on it but yeah it also cost me money yeah I guess yeah it cost me 800 euros yeah exactly to to to to well to for them to grab my money but yeah they didn't open the door they didn't they didn't answer the phone so basically I lost about four case 4K money in revenue and then 800 Euros for the for the legal fees so that was a big big [ __ ] up yeah and also another client they basically just just went broke and they were like yeah sorry but I we we really can't can pay yeah yeah and it was a really high invoice I guess it was like eight or nine Kate is yeah that's when we first bought our house and I really needed the money money yeah so that's when I freaked out a little bit and I told to myself okay this is the point where I'm going to transition from a few clients that are like eighty percent part of my portfolio to a mixed bag of high value clients and a few more of the lower value clients so I told to myself I do not want to risk my invoice is not getting paid or at least half or of it not not getting paid yeah so if I basically create a big portfolio of different clients in different niches verticals it would be okay and it really really gives me some Financial rest yeah yeah and speaking of a diversified
29:24portfolio of clients you said different verticals yeah so you've always worked with different types of clients Ecom yeah bbtc there was also deliberate conscious decision or yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so of course I really like every Google ad specialist has has has feeling for e-commerce or Legion or b2c or B2B I really like a legion especially b2c Legion so that's where I focused on mainly but I managed to get clients in different verticals from gardeners to driving schools to well every different different business types essentially but I also had the B2B SAS and the Ecom clients just to to hop in some diversification but also because I found it nice to see other the other parts of Google Ads instead of just running bottom of the funnel search campaigns you know so I really enjoyed running shopping later smart shopping later BMX for these types of clients as well and it's nice because then your skill set grows as well right yeah so it really helps when I later transitioned to part-time coaching but also the educational products that we make together nowadays that we have this big broad knowledge base of every single vertical and client type yeah yeah possible nice and yeah I think I think this was really nice because we definitely spoke about our stories when it comes to acquisition and getting clients yeah but I think we can also take it one step further and and talk about how we make sure that the clients stay on board yeah and they do not run
31:01away and they don't run away exactly because that's in the end as a freelancer the the that's why I like Google Ads is because it's always on it's in theory it's never ending and therefore if you get a client then there's a really big chance that they will stay with you for a long time yeah unless a couple of years for a couple of years unless they in-house or or stop or whatever there are reasons of course why you would stop working with with the client but if they are okay with you as a freelancer then yeah there's no reason why you cannot work with that for two three four five years so I think that's interesting to to Jump On In The Next Episode yeah so for everybody listening that was the the end of this episode we want to ask you to like And subscribe and leave a review and share it with with your colleagues and other people in in the PPC space yeah and that would be really cool to us and then we'll be back next week with an episode on retain clients which is I think gonna be an interesting one as well and yeah if you have any feedback for us just send us the DM we're also setting up a page where you can find everything about the podcast and where you can send in questions but that's going to come we'll announce that a bit later so for now thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next episode next week see you in the next episode ciao
