10,000 Prospects
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How do you find new clients?
Fliers, newspaper ads, and word-of-mouth are all very well-known
I have to always do things differently ;-)
I wrote about web scraping back in July. At that time I was preparing for a meeting with a conference interpreter in Switzerland. I wanted to understand the Swiss market and build an overview of all the Swiss interpreters and their digital footprints.
https://digital-done-right.com/tom-sawyer-travels/get-new-client-web-scraping
I ended up with over 1000 businesses and their online (or lack of) activities. I took this into my meeting and it was a great piece of knowledge with which we studied and took insights from. We then designed what would be the perfect approach for her business and one that would outsmart the competition. It was a good learning curve for me.
Fast forward 2 months and the reason why l have published so little this month - is web scraping.
10,000 Prospects
One of the key takeaways from my July session was the type of business I want to focus on - service-based businesses and those you don’t need very often. My logic is that if you are in need of a type of service you do not require often how do you find them? Either you ask a neighbor, colleague, or friend. Perhaps you read an ad in a local newspaper. Maybe the business dropped a flyer in your mailbox recently or, you open Google.
I am already working with a local photographer and that seems like one of these types of businesses. She focuses on maternity, young babies, and wedding photography. So yeah, those you don’t need every year. I drew an oval around Frankfurt and made the borders with a list of counties - 22 in total. With the geographical dimension defined, I then went to my Google business category list and chose a number of professions - 12 in total. Now I had all I needed to start scraping!
Well, 2 weeks later I built a database of over 13,000 local service-based businesses. These businesses are like painters, plumbers, ac/heating installers, electricians and you get the idea. I have all of their web addresses, their social media accounts, the activity online, and the general opinion of the internet of each of these companies. Yeah, not bad.
What will I do with all of this?
That is a really good question. First, I had to catch my breath. I was exhausted from spending all my days looking a sheets of data, cleaning them of erroneous information, and building the initial overviews. I will take each industry and build a set of data views. I will then build a micro-site on my website. That is a sub-set of pages that will be focused only on that industry. This will act as a landing page for those prospects who wish to “check me out”.
I will also publish an eBook for each one as well. All of this works as a honeypot; a teaser for them to see what I know and get an idea of what sets me apart from other online marketing firms. I have been asked to deliver a lecture at a university in Bavaria next Spring. “Why building an online presence is key for translators”. And yes, I have translators as one of my professions in my database with over 500 in the area.
And now what?
It is now the end of September and I have taken a break from the data to get this article written as well as my monthly newsletter. Then I have 2 weeks to get the first micro-site up and ready. The remaining sites will be quicker as there is a lot of copy-and-paste here.
Oh, I am thinking of printing some flyers as well. I feel that a bike ride through a few of these towns with a list of addresses next Spring might be a fun idea. Of course, I would document the process and share it here.
