30. Strategies for Finding and Retaining Clients as a Digital Nomad

One of the biggest problems digital nomads face is client retention and finding new clients. This can be a source of major anxiety for travelers since their income depends on having clients.

Add to the fact that digital nomads are always on the move, it can seem near impossible to create consistent monthly income. 

But that doesn't have to be the case. Just because digital nomads are moving around doesn't mean their businesses have to be struggling. Here are our best strategies for freelancers and online entrepreneurs to keep their client base and income steady, so you can explore the world while taking your business with you! 

Want more business tips? Check out this episode: The 7 Steps to Starting Your Successful Online Business

Sign up right now for the Digital Nomad Kickstarter beginning May 6th and learn what you need to get started as a digital nomad!
https://austinandmonica.com/digitalnomadkickstarter

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Transcript

Austin (00:00:03) - Hey you guys, it's finally time. We are so thrilled to introduce you to our new consulting offer, the six week Digital Nomad Moneymaking Roadmap. This is a program that's going to give you guidance on transforming your career into online work and becoming a successful digital nomad.

 Monica (00:00:20) - This six week digital nomad moneymaking roadmap is a one-on-one consulting offer that's going to help you avoid wrong turns, stay on track, and avoid feeling overwhelmed. We're gonna help you find your passion, set clear goals, and make living as a digital nomad, a successful and sustainable lifestyle.

Austin (00:00:38) - With our expert guidance, you can learn how to build a digital nomad career that allows you to work from anywhere in the world, will help you every step along the way too. From identifying your strengths to finding the best opportunities that match your skills and your interests.

Monica (00:00:54) - Don't wait any longer to start living the life of your dream. Sign up for our six week digital nomad moneymaking roadmap today and get on the path to success. You can find more information and sign up at Austin and monica.com/moneymaking roadmap.

Austin (00:01:10) - So let us help you transform your life and take it on the road.

Monica (00:01:14) - All right, let's dive in. Today's episode.

Monica (00:01:19) - I am so excited for today's topic. Our topic today is fire. We're gonna be talking about how to find and retain clients as a digital nomad while you're moving around keeping your business running smoothly. One of the biggest problems that freelancers and entrepreneurs have is retaining and finding new clients. In fact, in a study done by a brother abroad, he put out a survey with 4,000 people responding to a survey. Hands down the number one problem was client retention and finding new clients to keep that flow of income coming. So today we're gonna be diving into a bunch of strategies of keeping your current clients as well as finding new clients.

Austin (00:02:03) - Yeah, so this is gonna be a hot one, you guys. We're gonna just jump right into it. So first, we're gonna talk about retaining current clients and building that relationship cuz that relationship is so important. You're gonna have clients from all over the world. A, as a digital nomad, that's a really fun perk as you get clients from all over the place. But because your relationship with your clients is digital, there's gonna be extra work to make sure that relationship is maintained. So we have some strategies for you guys. First and foremost, we recommends that you communicate just really well with your clients. Keep in contact with them throughout your entire process, whatever it is. Whether you're a brander web designer, or a copywriter, or an ads manager, whatever it is that you do, communicate your process with them. Make sure that they're staying up to date on what you're working on and what's going on in their business.

Monica (00:02:50) - We kind of got some advice when we started working online. The way it was explained to us was if our clients could wave a magic wand and have a result produced, they would do that. But unfortunately, that's not possible. So the next best option is to pay someone and go through that process with them. With that in mind, we were told the less contact you have with your clients, the better. Cuz they don't really care about the process, they just want the results. I do agree that they want the results, but business is all about relationships and just like you need that relationship with them, they need that relationship with you. And a huge part of maintaining that and improving it is communicating. So we highly recommend that you just communicate. We have a philosophy of over-communicating oftentimes just to make sure everything's out in the open.

Monica  (00:03:31) - And I think it'll really help you stand out amongst the competition as well. Because as we are increasingly moving to a digital era, people are craving those human connections, right? So the more human connection points you have in your business with your clients, the more they're going to recognize that and you're going to kinda stick in the front of their mind,

Austin (00:03:53) - Especially in a world's too, where everything is so automated. We learn a lot about different ways to automate our business, and I absolutely think there's useful applications of automating responses and things like that. But when you get a personal response and you are communicating in person with somebody else, that's, that feels very different. So it's nice to have that. Our next recommendation is to ask for feedback on how you can better help them. We have a form that we send to our clients after we are done building a website or, or a brand project with them. We ask them for feedback about how it went. We have very specific questions that we've tailored to them, and then we'll ask them for any suggestions that they have on how to make the process better so that when we work with another client, we can implement that and, and make it better for the new client. You can also ask throughout the process, there's nothing wrong with asking them for feedback and then offer suggestions or your advice when they ask for it about services that maybe you don't currently provide. Maybe they need something you can't do, but you know somebody who offers it. So make sure you make those connections for them. Yeah,

Monica (00:04:55) - Along those same lines, it's important to always be available to answer questions that they may have or may, may come up even if they're things that don't necessarily align with the service that you're providing just to be there so you can, you can support them through the whole process and maybe refer them on to other business owners as the needs come up. But it is important to always be friendly and professional because you are representing yourself as an expert in the field. So be friendly but not over-friendly. Make sure that you're, you know, completely sober when you're responding to messages. <laugh>, make sure that you're sending kind and courteous messages that always kind of have an underlying tone of professionalism as well as optimism. Okay,

Austin (00:05:39) - Our next tip, I love this one. Under promise and overdeliver, the worst feeling is when you are promised something and then what you get back is, it's way less than that. We don't want to set the expectations of our clients too high and then not be able to actually deliver on what we tell them we're gonna do. On the flip side, if we under promise what they're gonna deliver, and then they pay for your product or service, but then what, what they get is beyond what they expected, that's just gonna stand out in their mind. You're gonna shine to them. One way that Monica and I left to do this is we'll send our clients a gift at the end of our project, especially if we've done a branding project for them. We'll send them some little, like a mug or a luggage tag or a notebook or something fun that has their new branding on it. It's just a little fun way for us to show them that we appreciated working with them and it's something that they weren't expecting that they got. There's all sorts of ways to over-deliver. Whether it's an extra little service that you didn't tell them about that you're gonna do or connect them in some way to some something that they weren't expecting, it's, it's always a fun way to surprise them. Again, you're really going to stand out in their minds.

Monica (00:06:47) - Yeah. I wanna be really clear here. We're not telling you to sell yourself short because you need to be advertising with everything you have. You need to be showing the results you've been getting. You need to be showing the service that you're providing and the problem that you're solving, but then just keep a little extra fun bonus things in your pocket. So it doesn't have to be anything huge. It can be as something as simple as, you know, if you're a social media marketer and you're creating content, maybe you create one bonus content a month or something, just something small that they can see that you are going the extra mile for them, that you really care about their business and you really care about their success overall. Along those same lines, it's really important, like if you understand the client's business, that's gonna make you stand out a lot, right?

Monica (00:07:35) - Because it really makes them feel special. It makes them feel like you understand them, you get them. So every time you have a client, make sure you're asking questions about their business, you're listening carefully. Like Austin mentioned, when we send client gifts, we really like to listen to our clients talking about their interests and their likes, and they're just dislikes and things like that. And then we'll try to send them a gift that kind of aligns with that. So for example, we built a website for a real estate agent and she bought herself a potted plant every time she sold the house. It's just kind of like a fun little like bonus. So for her gift, we bought her a beautiful little pot for one of her potted plants. So make sure you're listening as you're listening, they're going to tell you exactly how you can overdeliver for them. You can make things personal for them, and it's really gonna help you understand their needs and be able to fill them better.

Austin (00:08:26) - And then our last strategy for building relationships with your current clients is to help them in promoting their business, promote it on your own social media accounts or to your own audience when there's a launch or something like that. Just helping them get the word out about their business. They're likely gonna reciprocate that later down the road. And then it also just shows that you really appreciate what their business is and that you are willing to help.

Monica (00:08:49) - So the ultimate goal with all of these strategies of, of really taking care of your clients and going the extra mile is that your current clients convert into repeating clients. And so they'll come back to you if they ever need more of your service or if you have some kind of maintenance package or something. Of course you're gonna wanna keep working with you because it was such a good experience.

Austin (00:09:10) - The other reason all of these things are so important is the first strategy we have for finding new clients and finding new clients is a really big concern and question for online workers. So our tip is to ask for referrals. And if you've done everything that we've just talked about in building an awesome relationship with your current clients, asking referrals is gonna be easy. And that's gonna be the best way to promote your business because they've had such an incredible experience working with you. Of course, they're gonna tell their friends or their family or, uh, fellow business owners about you because why wouldn't they? You were so amazing at what you did. So if you create that incredible experience for them when it comes time to wrap up the project, or you've been working with them for a certain amount of time and it's, it makes sense to ask for a referral, you're much more likely to have somebody referred to

Monica (00:09:59) - You. Yeah. And the really nice thing about referrals is it really jumps you up to the top of the potential lion's list. We rely a lot on the feedback of other people all the time. Like I think about all the times I, I went shopping with Austen's mom, right? And before I ever bought anything, I asked for her feedback and I really valued that opinion. And it's the same thing in our business. When we talk to our other business friends and we get a referral from somebody, it instantly validates that offer and jumps them to the top of our list of people we wanna work with.

Austin (00:10:32) - Yeah, I would say I think about 95% of our clients have been through referrals from, from other people that we've known or other clients that we've had ourselves. So that's definitely our biggest source of new clients. And I guarantee if you, like I said, if you do everything that we've mentioned up to this point, that'll be the same for you. But we have more strategies beyond that doesn't end there. We suggest that you offer free advice, provide value to your clients or to your audience who will become clients because you want to show them that you are one, the expert in your field and that you know what you're talking about, that you have value to offer them once they pay for your services. But then it also just shows a genuine interest in them. They want to know that you really care about their success. And offering free advice is a good way to do that. And there's lots of ways to do this. There's freebies, there's just responding to messages or going on different online forums or group chats and offering different tips and suggestions there. You could even organize weekly or uh, monthly group meetings with people and do like a little training session or things like that. There's tons of ways to do it, but offering free advice is a great strategy, a great tactic.

Monica (00:11:40) - And then you can start to network with complimentary service providers as well as joining online communities and starting to network there, right? And build out your network. One really, really cool part about being a digital nomad is, is you are instantly entered into this world of online professionals who do so many cool things. And everywhere you go, you're gonna meet people who either might be in need of your services or offer complimentary services to you so you can network with them. And then, for example, going back to Austin and I, if we have a web design client who then asks for social media management, we have social media managers that we've networked with that we can refer them out to. And then often as you refer other business to these other providers, they're gonna feel some sort, uh, some sense of a debt of, of gratitude to you as well, right? So they're gonna wanna return the favor and send business your way.

Austin (00:12:34) - Yeah, I love this one. We are currently doing this. We have our coaching offer that we've just released. We, uh, we help people kind of jump into the digital nomad world and create online businesses, but we are not tax experts, but we've partnered with somebody who knows everything about taxes. She is the digital nomad tax guru. When our clients have questions about taxes, we can send them her way and then goes the other way as well. I love the networking with complimentary service providers. It's one of my favorite ways to build relationships, but also find new clients. Second to last point, here we have be consistent with your content creation. Creating content is, it goes along with offering free advice. You're providing value for people. And it does the same thing as offering free advice. You're building your authority and your expertise in what you do, and it's displaying that you genuinely care to help the people that you are in your audience.

Austin (00:13:25) - Last but not least, create a portfolio. Gathering some testimonials, whether you have to start with mock projects or free projects or, uh, heavily discounted projects. Um, everyone has to start somewhere, right? So if that's where you're starting, collect evidence of what you can do for people and then put that somewhere that you can then share with future clients and show them your work and show them how great you are at what you do. Testimonials, especially because that's incredible. So social proof to let others know that someone else has already worked with you, that they had a good experience and that's gonna boost their confidence in your service.

Monica (00:13:59) - Yeah, we really dive into these last two points in our episode titled Seven Steps of Building an Online Business. And we'll link to that down below so that you can really dive into that and figure out how you can make your portfolio start to work for you a lot more.

Austin (00:14:13) - All you guys. So we've covered a lot of ground in this episode so far. We've talked a lot about different strategies for building relationships with your current clients and making them want to come back for more. And also, we've given you some awesome strategies for finding new clients. We guarantee that if you've put these things into practice, you're gonna notice an uptick and people coming and finding you. And it might take a little bit of time, it's not gonna happen overnight, but I promise you guys, these strategies work. We've done all of them in our own business and they work wonders. So put them into practice. Maybe find one or two that you feel like you can start with this week and jump into that and then build that up. And it's gonna, it's gonna be gonna be awesome. You guys we're so excited for you to get your business up and going.

Monica (00:14:56) - All right, you guys, thank you so much for tuning into our podcast. We really hope that you found today's episode informative, valuable, and that you were able to find some actionable insights to apply to your life.

Austin (00:15:08) - If you're interested in taking your career on the road and becoming a digital nomad, then we invite you to explore our newest consulting offer, the six Week Digital Nomad Moneymaking Roadmap. This program is designed to guide you through the process of transforming your career into online work and living a successful, sustainable, and location independent lifestyle.

Monica (00:15:31) - With our years of digital nomad experience, we will help you identify your passions, set clear goals, and find the best opportunities that match your skills and interests, all without getting overwhelmed.

Austin (00:15:43) - So don't let the fear of taking a wrong turn or feeling lost hold you back any longer from living the life that you've always wanted. Sign up today for your six week digital nomad moneymaking roadmap@austinandmonica.com slash moneymaking roadmap, and let us help you turn your aspirations into a reality.

Monica (00:16:02) - Thanks again for joining us on this journey, and remember to stay curious, stay adventurous, and stay connected.