Hi, this is the Daily Overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps! Now today I wanna talk
about getting clients for your app company.
Ok so today I wanna answer a question by Nabster,
he left this on the complexity of charging clients from last Friday. He said "I like
these videos, I didn't know you were a motorcycle guy, cool" - yeah, I'm a cliche midlife crisis
guy, the motorcycle and stuff, I'll get a sports car one of these days - "Can you talk
a bit about client acquisition and how to get clients if you are in the app biz? Thanks".
now this is something I really like to do. In fact, I love doing client acquisition,
right, i love bringing in clients! I like clients acquisition more than I like having
clients, if you know what i mean. It's nice to go out there and toot your own horn and
try to get people to come in, even though a lot of times we don't have time to take
them on. So right now we turn away about 3 out of 4 projects, well more than that I guess.
So we get about 3 to 4 requests a week and a lot of times we just don't have time to
take them on, so I'll either just say that we don't have time or I'll go for a a bit
of a higher quote, because they'll go onto somebody else, which I know I probably shouldn't
do. But for the longest time it was really really hard. So I mentioned this before, when
I became a contractor to begin with, when I set up Overpass, I used it to contract first,
so I needed a company entity so I set up Overpass, but what I really wanted to do was have my
pwn software company with my own clients, all that kind of stuff. So I'd work for a
few years at a contract and eventually I would have enough money save that I could say "that's
it, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna find some clients." And then I would have these
awkward moments where I would work on my own stuff, I would do the websites, all the stuff
everybody does. "I just need to fix up my website first, I just need to read this book
first, I just need to do this first", and I didn't wanna get on the phone and call anybody,
and when I did it was really really awkward. And I showed you this book already before
- 'Cold calling techniques that really work' and I've got a bunch of these books. So it
was really really hard to do the out reach thing. So doing outbound marketing. So actually
cold-calling or cold-emailing, all that kind of stuff. And I still do that, I cold email
sometimes. So, right now, most of the clients that we get are inbound, so they find Overpass.
And there's two different types of clients, you've got the individuals - somebody like
me when I started out, they just wanna do an app and they're looking for a developer
to help them with it, or a company, so like maybe a small company, they have something
for their users. And between the two of them I prefer the company, but we've done work
with both. The company just because it's less emotional. So if somebody invests their savings
in something that's their hopes and dreams, a lot of times it can get really stressful
because they just want everything to be perfect and they don't want anything to go off the
rails and all that kind of stuff, so you have to be very reassuring. But anyway, I think
there's probably three ways that most of the enquiries come through. One of them is the
video. So this video is to talk to developers, the audience for this video is mostly app
developers, and none of you are ever gonna need Overpass to do your apps, that's just
the fact of the matter. But, a lot of people night do searches and they might find stuff
and occasionally we'll get somebody who calls up and says "I saw one of your videos, I'd
like to know how much it costs to do this" and all this stuff. So that's one way. So
basically all the content creation, not just the videos but the videos, the blogs, the
infographics, the social media, all that kind of stuff which seems frivolous, and this is
one of the reasons why it's hard to stay with because it seems like I don't know if this
is really making a difference, but it is a case of getting out there and making yourself
known. Like I said a few days ago, every market is crowded and to be an app developer is really
crowded. Another way is just through SEO techniques. So a friend of mine Matt, he now runs a company
called KYO digital, I hired him for a while and he wanted to do some SEO work, and he
basically set up location pages so that if somebody says app developer in Wantage, which
is the town we're in, Overpass would come up at the top. But also if they put other
places that are nearby, then it comes up high there too. So we've got loads of them! In
fact, we've got loads where I've actually had calls from - one of my clients is in the
Isle of Wight and when they called up they said "Yea Eric, do you think we could have
a chat about this requirement that we have?" And I said "Yeah, yeah", and they said "ok
I'm in the Isle of Wight" and I said "ok cool", because I'm american I didn't know where the
Isle of Wight was. All those years as an american high school student, filling in those maps
of the states with no labels on them, I know all of the states in America but my geography
of the UK is still not very good. But 2 - 3 hours out there, got to take a ferry, it was
awesome! So there's the SEO side of things. So there's content, there's SEO and then one
of the one's that's really big is LinkedIn. So for some reason a lot of people find us
through LinkedIn, which is probably, of all the social media networks, is my least favourite.
It's the most spammy, it's the most...all that kind of stuff. So every time we put out
a new article or sometimes the videos but not so much the daily ones, those go through
LinkedIn, the profiles set up every time we get the endorsements and all that kind of
stuff. And also, when somebody gives a request on LinkedIn, I always approve it. So regardless
of whatever it is, and usually it's like a development company, somebody says "you got
a connection request from John Smith" and it says business development, or business
development manager and you just think "ah, that just means salesman". That means he's
gonna email me immediately, but I just approve it anyway. So I just get loads of spam. and
the reason I do that, my strategy for LinkedIn that way is that the search works that the
closer you are in connection to the person, then the higher you show up in the ranks.
So if you do a search for app developer, it'll show first all your first degree connections,
the people you're directly connected to, and then your second degree connections where
you're just one person between you and them. So, all these people who are massive connectors
and they connect with as many people as possible and they connect to me also, then that means
that for a lot of people, for 20,000 people or whatever, I'm higher up in the rankings
because of that. So it's surprising how many people, when I say how did you learn about
Overpass, they say LinkedIn, which is kinda like the most...it's the one I don't like
the most. It's like "I looked you up in the phone book" kind of thing. I like it when
they find the videos, when they find some of our content, all that stuff that we worked
on, but it isn't. And then of course there's the apps, so when people see the apps they
get to see that kind of stuff. I think, if you're gonna run an app development company,
your apps are primarily to generate revenue, so primarily to bring money in, but also in
a secondary way they work as a portfolio piece. So if anybody wants to know what kind of work
we do, I don't need to show them every other client we've had, and believe me, I don't
like it when a software company contacts me and they give me a list of their apps, but
they're not their apps, they're other peoples apps. I prefer it if it's their own because
that means that they worked on it.to give you an example, the first company that I hired
to work on Ear Spy, they started including Ear Spy in all of their marketing material
as well as a lot of my other apps, and those apps were not all their intellectual property.
I brought in designers from other places and I brought in people from other places to work
on these, but it was still part of their thing. So for me, I was so terrible at doing the
outbound marketing, although it is fun to do and I have done it, I've had some really
good meetings with companies based on outbound stuff, but we've been so busy lately that
we're just doing inbound stuff. And you could say inbound is really nice, it's nice when
somebody contacts you and you don't have to go out there and reach for something because
they're already sold, they've already done their research for the most part and they're
really eager to get that done rather than cold-calling companies that may or may not
even need an app. That's just my experience. I think that if you're going to do an app
development company, work on your own - appearance is everything - work on your own social media,
work on your own apps, establish yourself. like with every job, whatever you're gonna
do, try to establish yourself in the industry. Say if you were hiring window washers for
example, and you had two people come to you, one guy said "yeah, I'm a window washer, I'm
from john smith window washing" and another guy said "yes, I'm with fantastic window company
and I've written articles, I've done blogs, I'm an established authority on window washing",
even though you don't need all that because it's just a simple job, that's more the person
you're linked to because you think "well, he's a professional, he knows what he's doing",
and professionalism is probably one of the biggest things you could do in terms of getting
new clients. It's difficult because it always feels like it doesn't make a difference. It
feels like it doesn't make a difference to make the app a little bit nicer or to do a
keyword research, or to do those extra blog posts. it's easy to say "I don't have time
to do a blog post today" but in the long run it's like going to the gym, it's important
even though you don't see the immediate effects of it. Anyway, that's it for today. I hope
it makes sense. People will disagree with me on that. And doing client work - if I had
a choice between our own apps that generate revenue and the client stuff, the own apps,
all the time! But the client stuff is good too, so if that's something you're looking
to do start establishing your brand now, start looking at it from the people contacting you,
and don't be that person who sends the email that says "Hi, we're a company, we specialise
in this, this, this" and name like 50 things and everything, because if they go to you
rather than you go to them, then you have a lot more in your favour. so anyway, that's
it for today, I'll talk to you guys tomorrow!