Many of my clients come to me and say ‘I want to get more clients’. My answer to them, start building your database and list of contacts.

Building a mailing list may not get you clients right this minute, but it is a long-term and probably most worthwhile approach to your marketing. Soon I’ll give you lots of ways how to do it, but first you need to know why!

1. When you have a database of client that you can communicate regularly with by newsletters and email you can start to build relationships with people. People only buy from people they know, like and trust and and a newsletter is a great way to let a bit of personality shine through. I’ve had prospective clients call me and say ‘I feel like I already know you!’ – how much more likely do you think they are to buy from me?

2. It can take 7 or so contacts with someone for them to even remember your name. Setting up an autoresponder with ‘Eight great ways to grow your business’ as a free mini-course encourages people to sign up with you in the first place, and then allows you to appear in their inbox eight times without you having to do anything further (saves you going to 8 networking meetings in my book!)

3. You can get feedback from your list as to what they actually want from you! Sounds daft but so many people try to provide a service that they think their clients need, rather than something they actually want to buy. This allows you to adapt what you’re offering, the more you offer people what they want, the more client’s you’ll get.

4. And most importantly you’ll be able to make more money. More subscribers to your list means you have a targetted group of people who already like what you do, and you have a medium to sell them tele-classes, e-books, coaching services and anything else they tell you they need.

The key though is to have the ‘right’ people on your list. Having a hundred friends, famlies or people-you-bumped-into-at-a-networking-event on your list won’t do you any good. Know who your ideal client is, find out where they go, and ask them to sign up to your newsletter, NOT to buy your product or service. That bit comes later!