When and if you do any cold selling and walking the streets what do you present to the potential client?
Just Business card?
Portfolio? Flyer with services listed? Color or black and white?
I am just starting to get my feet wet with the freelance thing and do not want to spend $1000 on color brochures but will spend when necessary.
What did you do starting out?
If you do have a flyer or brochure that you hand out what do you include?
Thanks everyone for the excellent learning experience!
Do a google search for every business within easy travelling distance by foot, bicycle,car etc whatever your prefered mode of transport.
Target those business with…
a: No website… and who may find one useful
b: Has a website that is old, broken or never been updated since created
Send an old fashioned letter via registered mail using professionally printed business stationary (NOT something you photoshopped up and laser printed) to the business introducing yourself, what you do and what you could do for them. NB: do your homework first and get a contact name, make sure the letter goes to the main boss or at least the head of the sales department for a medium size business.
A pretty website is only part of it, I think you need to show the business owner the competitive disadvantage at not having an online presence. Even if you are not a SEO professional, you should include some SEO work for the site.
Although I am not in the business if I was going for a personalized approach, I would also include a preliminary keyword position summary. You can throw in some data about the number of searches per keyword, and the percentage of people that click per position to show how many leads they might be missing. Do not oversell it because most people can smell BS a mile away, but make a reasonable argument.
I also know that there might be some purists that might take the position that a designer is a designer and not an SEO expert, but for a small unsophisticated customer you need to present a complete solution.