You’re pitching, you’re pitching, you’re pitching some more…

But you’re not getting any clients.

And you’re starting to feel the pressure.

You’re wondering: what else can I do to land the next (or maybe even first) client as quickly as possible?

If you’ve had trouble getting people to respond to your pitches, you’ll love today’s episode of Write Bites.

I’m going to give you three super practical pitching strategies that (assuming you’re willing to put in the work) will help you accelerate your results.

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What do you do when no one’s responding to your pitches?

This is a super frustrating situation to be in.

And while I would encourage you to keep pitching and assure you that with enough pitches you will ultimately land clients…

At the same time, I want to give you three additional strategies that you can begin implementing right now to increase the speed and increase the chances you have of landing that first client (or even landing that next, really good client) as quickly as possible.

We’re going to be covering three strategies in today’s episode. So let’s dive in.

This episode of Write Bites is sponsored by CopyAI, a toolkit that helps writers, marketers, and freelancers skip writer’s block completely and harness the power of GPT-3 to quickly create first draft copy for themselves and their clients.

Head on over to https://www.copy.ai/jacob and sign up to get a full 30-day free trial.

You’re pitching, you’re pitching, you’re pitching some more.

You’re not getting any clients and you’re sort of on the clock.

You’re wondering: what else can I do to move this process forward and land that next client as quickly as possible?

I’m about to give you three super practical, super effective strategies that are going to take a little more work than the typical pitching style that I teach. But if you put the work in and use these strategies, you are going to get results very, very quick.

So let’s start with number one, and that is…

#1: Create a Content Asset To Include In Your Pitches

So, what is a content asset?

A content asset is a piece of writing within a niche that you’re targeting. It’s focused on a topic that’s going to matter to a particular niche or industry, and it’s highlighting your writing ability.

So, for example, if you’re a travel writer, you could put together a big guide focusing on travel destinations in a post COVID world or travel destinations as the world is starting to open up, or even something connected to what industries or what business models in the travel space you think are going to really explode as people start to travel, as things open up, something like that.

Basically just tapping into a trending topic. Ideally we’re looking for some data that might be interesting to business owners, to marketers, to the types of people are going to hire writers.

So, for example here, you could look at Google Trends.

You could hop into Google Trends and just type in some different destinations and see what’s been getting the most search traffic over the last six months and use that to sort of inform this “Hey, here’s where everyone’s going to start traveling as soon as things open up.”

And what this is going to do is it’s going to highlight that you understand how to research your space, that you understand how to identify trends – how to identify interesting important information in your specific niche.

And it’s then going to be a feature highlighting exactly how you write. It’s going to show that you’re a great writer in the space as well.

So, creating an asset like this, you can then include this in your pitches.

So now, instead of just pitching people saying “Hey, I’m a writer, I’m available if you need some help with your writing”, you can actually send them this asset alongside your pitch and say, “Hey, here’s an example of a piece I just wrote.”

Then you could just share it around- just purely promote it as “Hey, I wrote this thing”.

And you might be surprised how many people then come to you and say “Hey, we’d love something like this for our blog”, or, “Hey, can you help us out with our, you know, messaging on some new venture we’re doing connected to travel”.

it’s a way to basically get your name in front of a lot of people, which is what we’re trying to do with pitches.

But now, instead of just, you know, instead of just putting your name out there and saying “Hey, hire me”, you’re putting your name out there attached to an actual asset – to something that demonstrates your value right from the start.

You don’t need any special inside access.

You don’t need any permission.

You don’t need anyone to sign off and say “Hey, write this for our blog”.

You just write it yourself.

You publish it to either your website, or – if you don’t have a website – you can publish it as a LinkedIn article.

You could publish it as a medium.com article.

Or you could look to guest post it, or even sell it after you write it to a publication in the travel space (or whatever niche that you’re in).

But the key here is that you’re reducing uncertainty for anyone interested in hiring you.

You’re showing them exactly what you can do, without them needing to guess, without them needing to wonder what value you have to offer. You’re putting that value right up in their face, from the start.

#2: Offer A Low-Effort Copywriting Audit

Now, this works best for any sort of copywriting that’s a bit more intensive, a bit more involved.

We’re talking about, you know, a website copywriting rewrite, maybe a sales page revamp, a welcome sequence, an onboarding sequence, a sales sequence, something that involves a good bit of effort, a good bit of work.

What you can do is come in and provide insights and value and critique on an existing asset that the company you want to work with already has in place

So, for example, let’s say there’s an influencer who has a sales page. And you know, looking at that sales page, that there’s some mistakes that they’re making, some things they’re doing that aren’t optimal.

What you can do is just record a quick video – maybe 10 minutes – of you going through the sales page and pointing out everything that is suboptimal.

Anything where they could improve.

Any place, any opportunity for them to improve the performance of that page that you can explain, you’re going to go ahead and do that.

And you’re going to lay it all out right there for them in a way that they could just take that information and run with it… and you’d never make a dollar.

And that’s okay!

Because the reality is execution is always harder than the idea.

What we’re looking to do is we’re looking to provide that really easy value.

It doesn’t take you any effort to record a quick 10-minute video laying this stuff out.

it’s going to be a lot more challenging for that person to then take this information and turn it into better copy.

Because one, they’re probably not a copywriter.

Two, they probably know that their page isn’t optimal. they just haven’t had time to get to it. It’s working good enough. and for the time being, they have other things that are higher priority.

So the much more likely scenario here is (if you do this with enough people), someone is going to see that feedback.

They’re going to nod along and go “Wow, that’s great advice. You seem to know your stuff”.

And then they’re just going to hire you to do it.

You can mention when you send them the audit that “Hey, you know, just wanted to send this your way. Hope it’s helpful. If you’d like any help implementing this, just let me know”.

You can kind of do the low-key pitch.

You can also, just send it to them, leave it for them to talk with you about it – just use it to start the relationships, start the connection. Or you can include a full proposal along with it.

Whatever you want to do, try out, you know, try out a couple of different things.

I kinda like the low-key option, just because then it leaves things open for it to be a relationship builder.

And then if I can tell that “Hey, this is going somewhere”, then I’ll come in with a stronger pitch, the stronger proposal.

But all three options are totally viable.

the key here is that again, you are putting defined upfront value in front of someone that you want to work with or in front of someone who could potentially be a good fit to work with you.

And that’s the key here.

In the pitching process that I teach you, I really focus on volume. Because the reality is, if you’re coming in as a new freelancer, you don’t have a lot to work with.

The assets you create in step one aren’t going to be as good as they will be in two years.

The insights that you’re going to be able to provide here, aren’t going to be as good as they would be, you know, two years down the road.

So what I focus on is just getting you in front of as many people as possible.

So you can see that “Hey, with enough, with enough hustle, I will land clients”.

And that’s true.

But these are the extra steps that you can take (as imperfect as they’ll be) to put that upfront value along with the pitch, which is going to give you even better results.

Okay, strategy number three…

#3: Stalk Someone Successful & Pitch Them Very, Very Specifically

Now, this is going to be a very involved process. This is not the type of thing that you’re going to be able to do, you know, 10 times in a week.

What we’re talking about here is the, the people, the brands that you genuinely know because you genuinely follow them.

So you’re going to follow along with their work and you’re going to be looking for opportunities to add value to their brand.

As we talked about in the last episode, every successful person, every successful brand has a laundry list of things that they would like to get to, but can’t.

If you follow someone who does a lot of content, there’s no way they’re not going to address some of the challenges that they face.

If you look closely enough, you’re going to find opportunities to add value.

And so what we want to do here is we want to wait to find a really specific, really home run value-add, and then go in and offer that.

And this is a lot easier when you’re looking outside the marketing space.

So, you know, if, if you’re following marketers to learn marketing, and marketing is the skill you’re working on, the chances of you finding a way to come in and add value in the marketing side are much lower than if you’re following someone in the fitness space.

Whatever it is, whatever space that you’re in that you follow (again, that you genuinely know – so you are a genuine fan of this person, you are a genuine follower of their brand)…

You can look for ways to come in and add marketing value, add writing value, add whatever sort of value connects to the skill set that you’re developing personally that they have not been able to get to.

When you step out of the marketing industry, especially you notice glaring holes everywhere you look.

This is not hard to find.

Just a few months back, I reached out to a fitness guy who I’m a huge fan of. I follow his program, and love his content.

This guy is not a marketer, he’s a hustler.

He’s doing, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and has a massive following (massive brand, has just absolutely exploded over the last year)…

But he has huge and numerous holes and his marketing.

So I reached out to him and just said, “Hey, here’s a few things I noticed on your website and with your content where, you know, if you were just to do these few extra steps, you could get a lot more value from this.”

That started a conversation. We hopped on a call, uh and we’ve been in semi-regular connection ever since.

And while this hasn’t resulted in an actual paid project yet, I now have a really great network connection who’s doing very well in his space. And this could lead to a lot of work at some point if I ever decide to really pursue that line.

As I mentioned before, at this stage, I’m a lot more interested in just keeping relationships open than trying to turn any given one into immediate work.

I’ve found that the biggest opportunities often tend to simmer and develop over time, as you’re just genuinely connecting with people, providing value, things of that nature. And this is especially true when you’re targeting successful people.

When you’re targeting people who are doing big things, who are putting the work in, those connections can pay off years down the road.

And yes, you can also immediately land great clients out of these types of pitches as well.

So that’s strategy number three: reach out to the people who you are genuinely a fan of, look for opportunities to add value to their businesses, and then just reach out and make the connection and see where it goes.

Like I said earlier, these are not volume strategies. And they’re not easy.

You’re going to have to put some work in on all three of these.

But if you’re not getting responses from your pitches right now, and you’re looking for ways to do some extra work to get faster results…

These three strategies are how you’re going to do it.

Hope that was helpful, and I’ll catch you guys in the next episode.

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Share Your Thoughts

I hope this was helpful, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Do you agree? Do you disagree with the fierce heat of a thousand suns?

Let me know in the comments below.

Plus, if you have a question you want answered on a future Write Bites episode, ask in the comments or shoot me an email, and I’ll add it to the schedule.