Hello everyone, my name is Stanislav Kungurov, I am 25 years old and I live in the city of Izhevsk.

In the past, I probably dealt, like many of you, with links. In particular, he sold links in guards (led a blog), then in sape, then in google and world, then he took up context. This path took me 5 years and gave me a lot of experience.

How it all began

In 2012, I found my first seo client and started doing client seo. Before that, I had experience in promoting only informational sites, but as it turned out, client sites are even easier to promote. At the same time, I was selling links in Gogetlinks, but over time, this income faded into the background.

My first client is a furniture factory that I found through a friend who bought furniture from them for his shop. As a result, we managed to get through to the director and offer them seo in exchange for a sofa. J) Then there was seo in exchange for visiting the sauna, in exchange for a bed and again for a sofa)). Sofas can be sold by the way on Avito.

Over time, my sites were banned, and there were more and more clients. Around the beginning of 2013, I practically stopped selling links, giving work to 100% outsourcing.

1 year of studio life

As I already said, the first year of the life of the studio "my studio" was in the amount of one person - me. But this did not stop me from promoting 5-10 client sites, leaving for meetings with clients in the office or in production. This makes it even more convenient for them.

Literally a year after the first client, I rented an office. I didn’t have a company name, I didn’t have an individual entrepreneur or LLC, I didn’t even have my own website. All calculations were carried out in cash, I entered all the results in excel.

2 years of studio life

In August 2013, I took a job in the office of an advertising agency, and thus moved from home to work in the office. It was the first important decision.

The first important decision is to move to work in the office, this increases productivity. I doubted for a long time, but now I do not regret it.

Registered IP. After that, we teamed up with the guys - they sold the context, and I sold seo. Rented a separate office. Six months later, I had my first employee - a SEO specialist, who helped me in various matters. It helped me to relieve myself a little.

Due to partners, I gained experience and was no longer afraid to sell my services expensively.

3 years of studio life

If earlier everything was not systematized, then by the 3rd year everything began to take on some meaning. I got an LLC, we raised prices to a level slightly below the average for the city, and began to improve the quality of services.

There was an accounting department, a second SEO specialist and a sales manager. We began to take orders for development of about 100 tr., and clients began to appear on seo with budgets of 10-20, or even 40 tr. per month. We began to study ways to attract customers, ways to retain them, I began to conduct financial planning (in order to pay salaries on time). We began to actively use the landing page to attract customers. Again raised prices to the market average or even slightly higher.

In general, something seemed to be serious, but at the same time, more severe problems began for everyone, for example, with salaries, accounts receivable, and so on. It's a little depressing. But if you take care of such problems in advance, then you can avoid them, I already know how.

Now there are many plans for the future for the development of the studio. I began to understand which channels bring the most profitable customers, and which customers eat up the maximum amount of time.

I briefly tried to tell about the life of our studio, now we have 4 people working, including me. By the standards of Izhevsk, we are a small studio, by the standards of the Russian Federation, we do not exist at all. The average studio revenue for seo is about 200 tr. per month is not enough. Our goal by the end of 2015 is to make 300 tr. per month, increase the average check.

4 Major decisions that I made and did not regret:

1. Move to the office from home, this is important.
2. Hire the next employee when his salary can be paid from the company's revenue without consequences.
3. Raise your prices. Constantly raise prices to reasonable limits, first study all your competitors in the city. We raised prices 2 times for new customers, first by 30%, then by 50%, and both times nothing changed.
4. Do financial planning. This is something monthly, only they are compiled at the beginning of the month. Helps not to get with ZP.

Top 5 mistakes I made:

1. Use the services of accountants for registration and reporting. When registering an individual entrepreneur, I got 70 pieces, only missing 1 sheet to the tax office. Let me remind you that the accountant would take 1000 rubles for this.
2. Don't take an expensive office. Take a convenient office so that it is convenient for employees to get to public transport.
3. Do not hire employees on the condition that they earn their salary. This applies to the sales department, when the company has no money, they hire employees in the hope that they will bring new customers in 1 month. Approximate adaptation in the company 1-2 months minimum (this is the experience of my partners).
4. Make contracts with everyone, even if the payment is small by 3-5 tr. Otherwise, it will be difficult to prove later that you owe something.
5. Always keep correspondence by mail or other messenger. Customers are illiterate in seo, so for them your information over the phone may not be remembered, and then you will not be able to show them what was agreed.

Conclusion

They also asked me to write about investments - there were none. All funds were taken from the profits, I served the first clients on my working computer. And so, in fact, you need a little investment - 1 working computer is about 10 tr, 1 workplace is 2.5 tr. per month + keycollector for SEOs 1.2 tr. Total 13,700 rubles per 1 employee in the first month. Was the post helpful?

Yes 1 No 0

A year and a half ago (in March 2017) I began to actively implement a content marketing strategy to promote a web studio. The results of long and painstaking work will be described in the post. Each of my statements, each figure, I will confirm with screenshots from Yandex.Metrica and other monitoring systems for sites. I will talk about the content marketing methods that I used, show examples of articles that have collected the most traffic and brought in the most customers. The case will be detailed, visual and interesting.

The benefits of content marketing or why links were abandoned

We (I and the owner of the studio Igor Filipenko) decided to promote the site with content for several reasons:

The web112 website is the basis for the implementation of our content marketing strategy

Here I want to immediately note that one detailed case about promoting web112.biz with the help of content has already been published. I also wrote it. Only it was written from the point of view of an employee (or rather a partner) of a web studio and for a web studio blog. This case is different. It is written for a specialist blog that primarily deals with optimized content. Here I highlight other points. Plus, there is information about how the implementation of our strategy continued after November 2017 (when the first case was published).

However, some of the data in these two posts is the same (for example, information about the technical condition of the web112.biz site, which will be located just below). If you have studied the first case (and I strongly recommend reading it), keep in mind that there are not many repetitions. This page is about 90% different information. The data here is more recent, covers a longer period of time and the main emphasis is on other points.

So the website of the web112 studio:

1. Adequate mobile layout (from the point of view of Google, Yandex and the user)
2. No technical errors
3. Good download speed
4. Secure HTTPS protocol
5. Pages with the description of services are beautifully designed in the form of landing pages

And now the important question...

Would we have achieved the results that will be discussed later in the article if the site had not been optimized from a technical point of view?

I'm sure not. It is realistic to optimize an informational article on a crooked site (I myself proved this in an article about). But the results are much more noticeable if the site meets all the requirements of search engines.

What tasks should content marketing solve?

There is only one main task - to increase the number of web studio clients.

I note that the potential client of Web112 is the owner of a business (often a large one). For this reason, our content marketing was aimed primarily at the b2b segment. Long reads and small texts were supposed to attract attention and convince people who own factories and large trading companies. Many of these businessmen have already approached developers and were dissatisfied with the results. They know what they want and understand the difference between a site built on a website builder and a large multifunctional portal.

The content that we planned to create had to influence the studio's orders:

• Directly - a representative of the target audience gets to the site from organic search, reads the post and immediately places an order using the form at the bottom of the page.
• Indirectly, articles attract traffic for information queries, earn the trust of search engines, which leads to an increase in positions for commercial queries. Another option: a potential client follows a link from an informational article to a landing page with a description of the service and only then makes an order.

At the same time, it is important to comply with the condition that content marketing pays off the funds invested in it. Orders are good. But if there are very few of them (and there are a lot of articles), the strategy must be changed.

What has been done in a year and a half of work on promoting the website of the web studio with articles?

Content Volume

The first article was published on March 3, 2017, the last one at the moment is July 16, 2018. For all the time, I personally wrote 32 longreads with a total volume of 357,860 characters without spaces. Yes, I thought. When I was preparing to write a case, I reviewed all the blog posts and copied all my articles into a separate file (not all blog posts are my work, part of the content was created by the head of the studio, Igor Filipenko).

Here I want to point out something. Today, everyone is engaged in Internet marketing. Literally everything. Someone works all day, someone creates “selling unique content” when there is free time in the office at their main job, someone thinks that “you can do copywriting until I find something normal.” All these people who treat content marketing in the same way as handing out flyers on the street (no need to think much, but they pay), they are not able to lead long-term projects. They cannot and do not want to work for a long time, constantly, continuously, for a year and a half to study someone else's business and take care, first of all, about its promotion, and not about their own earnings.

I think that 18 months of work on one website and almost 360,000 characters for one client are good indicators that demonstrate the difference between those who just work part-time and real specialists who have been promoting on the Internet for years, protect their reputation and know how to achieve results.

What other content marketing work have I done?

• I thought over and put down internal linking.
• I took all the screenshots and selected pictures for the articles. I didn’t count the number of all the pictures, but I can say that in one post about landings there are as many as 29 illustrations (of which 2 are GIF animations that I created myself).
• Some articles were published by the content manager, but most of the posts were posted on the site by me. The content manager might have missed something (a picture or a link). I wanted everything to be exactly the way I envisioned it. 100% of the pictures and links that I have prepared for a particular article must be on the site.
• I also put links on sites for which I wrote guest posts or simply used for communication. I note that I was not paid for the links. I put them on not because I'm a saint, but because I have an ordinary human desire to see the results of my work. The higher these results, the more pleasant. It is important that I can demonstrate the effectiveness of my links (screenshot below). I doubt they brought even one studio client (although anything is possible). In this case, not customers are important, but a bonus to behavioral factors. It is also important that the links will stay on these sites for a very long time (and all the time they will bring targeted traffic to the studio's website). Note that the most appreciative readers came from Medium.com.

The most important part of the case: review of content

How articles were written and what results they brought

You can write a separate article about working on almost every post for web112: tell how the topic was chosen, how the semantics was collected, where the data came from, how the text was optimized, etc. I invested 2 or more days in writing, designing and publishing some longreads.

Once again, I can and want to advise the case that I published on web112.biz - there is a fairly detailed description of the work on the most popular posts.

Here I want to focus on relatively recent longreads that have already shown good results.

The volume of the article: 9970 characters without spaces.

Number of illustrations: 14

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 17 (below are some of them)

This and other illustrations with a lot of data are clickable. Click for a closer look.

As you can see, I collected the keys using SerpStat. It has been the most convenient SEO tool for me for 2 years now.

I was looking for materials for the article on the CIS and foreign resources. I have saved a file in Word with the main facts and theses on the topic, which I copied from various sources, because I considered them to one degree or another important. This file is 5 pages and 8 thousand characters long. I did not use all the information from there, but a lot came in handy.

I will note some of the most important sources with useful facts and figures:

1. A Different Kind of SEO: 5 Big Challenges One Niche Faces in Google from moz.com
2. Analytical review of the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems "Legal services market in Russia: what the statistics say" (this is not an article, but a pdf-report that can be found in the public domain)
3. Analysis: which website is better for lawyers and law firms? from lextext.ru

Please note that among the keys that made it to the TOP, there are such important ones as “development of a legal website” and “creation of a website for a lawyer”.

Above is a screenshot of the issue for the Moscow region.

The volume of the article: 14325 characters without spaces.

Number of illustrations: 12

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 9

Some of the requests that brought (and still bring) potential customers to the web studio's website can be seen below.

Important details of creating a longread:

1. In preparation for writing this article, I created a simple WordPress site on a subdomain of one of my resources. I did this in order to provide the post with the most recent and relevant tips and screenshots. WordPress is a very convenient content management system, creating simple site with its help takes no more than an hour. However, I don't know many authors who know how to do and do what they write about. A good thoughtful rewrite of other people's instructions - yes. Writing a detailed manual from scratch, based solely on your own experience - in 99 cases out of 100 NO. I am very glad that the readers of the Web112 blog do not receive bare theory, but proven up-to-date advice from practice.
2. In the meta tags and in the text of this article, I used a deadly SEO weapon - the date. I've talked about this many times in my posts. speeches- in a huge number of niches, the date is a simple but effective way to collect additional traffic.

Volume: 12846 characters without spaces

Number of illustrations: 16 (of which 2 are GIF animations, which I also created to better demonstrate the advantages of certain sites - screenshots were not enough).

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 15

Some of the requests that brought (and still bring) potential customers to the web studio's website can be seen below.

An important nuance! Below you see beautiful (with a bulleted list and a picture) snippets in Yandex results with links to the post in question. I assure you, this is no accident. How did I do it? Everything is simple there. You have a link to the article: read, study, I think that you yourself will understand.

A few other useful facts about working on content

Last year (2017), an article about popular CMSs got the most traffic. Last but not least, this was due to the presence of the date in the text and meta tags. I wanted the long read to continue to bring readers in 2018, some of which were converted into customers. To do this, I changed the date in the meta tags and added an additional block where I told the latest data on content management systems. Thus, I not only adjusted to search engines, but also to users (I actually gave them information from 2018).

I did the same with an article about the structure of a selling landing page (changed the dates and added a fresh up-to-date block). What did it lead to? You will know very soon.

The results of web studio promotion using content marketing

Sales

The main result is that we (I remind you that the merit is not only mine, but also the head of the studio, who worked closely with me all this time) achieved the goal. There are more customers, and their orders paid off investments in content by about several times. Why about?

Because it is not always possible to say exactly what brought the client to the site and what motivated them to place an order. Sometimes this is obvious, as the client himself reports this:

Sometimes you can guess by indirect signs. We open Yandex.Metrica, we see that someone visited the site with the request “website development for a lawyer” and stayed there for 30 minutes. That same day, a call comes in: a businessman wants a cool resource for his law firm.

In any case, if we take into account only the orders of those clients who directly said that they applied to the studio because they liked this or that article, it turns out that content marketing brought orders worth more than 800 thousand rubles.

There are two important points here.

1. In the case, which is published on web112.biz, we are talking about orders in the amount of 200 thousand rubles. At the time of publication of that case, the amount was just that. You understand that a lot of time has passed since then, during which the content has been useful.
2. An order is not a net profit. This is not to say that content marketing brought the studio 800 thousand in income. Net profit is significantly lower.

Traffic and Other SEO Results

This is how I grew up search traffic since my start:

You can double-check with one of dozens of SEO tools. Unlike some, I do not hide the name of the site I worked on, because of the contract or because of the competitors, or because (insert a plausible excuse that allows you to PR without any risks). Although I understand that I probably made mistakes for which they will criticize.

Here’s how much targeted traffic the 5 most popular posts at the moment brought in:

In the first place is an article about CMS (which means that the “post refresh” trick worked).

In third place is an article about the structure of a selling landing page (and this once again means that the trick with “refreshing posts” worked).

I want to draw your attention to the fact that in the TOP 5 there is not a single post written by the head of the studio. It's not because he created bad content (Igor has published some very cool cases and written other useful articles). The fact is that (here I repeat) there is a noticeable difference between a person who simply writes well and a specialist who has been professionally engaged in content for more than a year.

It's funny, but in 6th place in terms of traffic is a post about website promotion using posts. I checked the output, hoping that we would surpass Texterra, but alas:

What else should be mentioned?

A few moments.

1. I wanted to fit a lot more data into the article. Still, I understand that if you add information for each keyword and attach any possible reports from Yandex.Metrica, Yandex.Webmaster, Search Console, SerpStat (and I can do this), almost no one will want to read the longread to the end. The case should be not only informative, but also interesting.
2. I repeat once again: I did not want to duplicate the facts from the case, which I published on the studio's website. If there is some information missing, look there. I think you'll find the missing links.
3. In 2017, for title images, we used pictures from a photo stock (for which, by the way, we paid) and screenshots from films. In 2018, after my active requests, a template for branded illustrations was created. I am extremely pleased with this fact. With them, the post attracts more attention (the number of bounces decreases) and inspires more confidence in the studio.

One and a half year work on the website of the web studio: conclusions

The first few months of implementing a content marketing strategy showed zero results. Not a single person from the search. But now, a year and a half later, it is clear that many posts have been driving traffic for more than a year and, apparently, will generate it for a long time to come. The results are not instant, but long-term and stable. Previously, after disabling contextual advertising, the influx of customers practically stopped. Now it is turned off, but customers still go.

Personally, I'm happy with the results. It's easy to do b2b content marketing in a competitive field like web development. Achieving results that can be laid out like this and proved with screenshots is many times more difficult. However, I succeeded. I think that the fact that I created SEO content for good studios. I knew for sure that no one was being deceived there, I knew for sure that web112's sites turned out to be of high quality (it seems not quite the right word, but I want to use it). I was sure that the studio would work for many more years (which means a lot can be done).

Update 2019: How Content Marketing Works 6 Months After Case Publishing

When I wrote this case in August 2018, I said that my longreads have been driving traffic for more than a year and I am sure that they will continue to drive traffic for a long time to come (and you don’t have to invest a dime in their promotion).

It's February 2019 now. Is my content marketing strategy working? Look at the screenshot below. There are the most traffic articles at the moment. These are the same longreads as six months ago.

As you can see, the content is still working. Without investments in advertising and links.

Who among us would not like to become the owner of a profitable business? Dreams of a leather chair and running a company can be realized, you just need to choose an actual idea.


In the age of information technology, it makes sense to use the Internet. Through the Internet, you can provide various services, including the creation of websites.

How to open a web studio? The services of such companies are in demand, now people often think about opening their own sites. Moreover, resources are created to launch a business or find clients. The Internet has long become a separate area in which the modern generation is deepening.

Is it profitable to open a web studio?

Almost any type of business becomes profitable if it is launched by a competent entrepreneur. First of all, you need to think about the services provided.

The larger the range, the better. Clients can be interested not only in the development of turnkey websites, there are other areas:

• development and finalization of design;
• sale of ready-made templates;
• site layout;
• creating quality content;
• setting up advertising campaigns;
• help in website optimization;
• complex website promotion.

You can come up with many other additional services, identifying competitors, holding promotions, adding affiliate programs, and much more.

Stages of opening a web studio

It is much easier to act according to a planned plan, so it needs to be drawn up in advance.

This is not about the business plan of the web studio, but about your actions. You need to think through every step on the way to opening such a company:

1. Start by creating a list of services provided. Determine their approximate cost, look at competitors.
2. Official registration is mandatory, it is better to open an IP. Why is it so important? Because serious clients do not work with individuals.
3. Without a team of professionals, it will not be possible to provide services. You must also have an accountant.
4. You need to open an account in a bank for a legal entity. Also in different payment systems to accept electronic payments.
5. Services must be provided under a contract, but it is better to create it in advance. Make templates for different types of orders.
6. Think over all the technical components, where domains will be registered, what kind of hosting or even a dedicated server will be used.
7. A web studio simply will not be able to attract customers if the company does not have its own, high-quality, promoted and optimized website.
8. Organization of technical support should be carried out in advance. Workers can be found on stock exchanges, for example, on.
9. The first orders are the hardest to beat, so it's worth lowering the prices and working for reviews only to begin with.
10. Next, you need to make every effort to promote, organize the workflow, process orders, and so on.

This small plan will help you take the first steps, but it is not complete. In the course of opening a web studio from scratch, there are still many different difficulties. Look for the best solutions to overcome barriers.

Web studio business plan

The composition of this document may vary, depending on your goals. If you plan to attract investors, you will need to make a detailed business plan. If it is compiled for itself, it will go and.

The main thing is that it reflects the most important points:

• Company name;
• format of activity (IP, OJSC);
• legal address;
• list of founders;
• date of establishment of the company;
• form of management;
• field of activity (IT technologies);
• cost of services;
• expenses and authorized capital;
• a detailed list of services;
• the number of employees in the state;
• project development plan;
• list of bugs to be fixed;
• description of the procedure for transferring the finished work;
• customer sources;
• risks and competition;
• business profitability (deep calculations of income and expenses).

Decide for yourself how voluminous the business plan is. Is it needed at all? Of course, since at this stage all important points are considered and ways to solve possible problems are found.

How to promote a web studio?

Any kind of business requires development. If you do not make an effort, even the first customers can not be found. If you plan to open a web studio, you should understand how advertising for such projects works.

A couple of days ago, a guy wrote to me in a personal with a request for a consultation. He said that he had assembled a team of developers, and they were all ready to make websites. But, there was a question about finding customers, which must be resolved even before starting a business. It is foolish to believe that it is enough to start a business, and customers will catch up on their own.

Do you need a sales manager for a web studio

I did not ask him about the experience of team members, about portfolios and other things, the answer to which is obvious. It became interesting to me what specialists he gathered and with whom he was going to work. As it turned out, the guy in the team has 2 layout designers, one designer, several copywriters (I am always alarmed by such a number), a targeted advertising specialist, an SEO specialist and a project manager. He himself organizes the process. Who do you think is missing here?

And there is not enough person in the team who will sell services. These guys are artisans. I hope they do their job well, but you have to be able to sell it. And for this, the team simply needs a sales manager. And if this is not the case, the search for a client often falls on the shoulders of the organizer of the entire party.

I will try to talk about the existing channels for attracting a client for a web studio, and show several creative approaches that we have personally tested.

Where and how to find clients for a start-up web studio

1. Word of mouth

There is no more loyal and ardent client than the one who came on the recommendation of comrades (acquaintances, partners, etc.). Just don't lose their trust! To do this, always work for the result and think about the future, and not about how to cut the dough today.

One of the best options for spreading your word of mouth reputation remains referring your client to their friends or associates. Clients will only recommend you if they are satisfied with the cooperation. Accordingly, it will be much easier to conclude a new deal in this case.

2. Social activity: forums, chats, communities

Participation in discussions on forums, communities, chats, etc. helps to increase your recognition as a developer or your brand. Someone will read the comment and move on, someone will discuss with you, and someone will write in a personal message and order the service.

Also, if you competently influence the discussion, you will show your professionalism, increasing interest in yourself.

I had a case when I was just starting to communicate on the forums,. I came across a request from a travel company to evaluate their site and make suggestions for improving it.

I painted all the ideas and thoughts. What I said was far from the truth, and some statements can be challenged. But, the result is in the face. The company was interested in my comment, after which we made a good deal.

3. Thematic webinars, conferences and events

This method allows you to declare yourself in the professional market. Share with colleagues, network, or speak at a conference for entrepreneurs in order to collect contacts of potential customers.

To obtain the expected result, you need to be as accurate as possible. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to correctly compose her portrait. And only then prepare and send out invitations to the event.

There are many venues for online events. Youtube example

4. Studio blog

A great tool that makes you recognizable, shows your expert value and, of course, sells. One of our subscribers read a case about website promotion in our blog and became our client in a couple of days.

‒ What should be the studio blog?

‒ Ideal in terms of the usefulness of the content!

“It needs to be constantly developed.

A blog needs to benefit readers. Only in this case will they subscribe to you, add some pages to bookmarks and more will come. You will receive your database of mailing addresses, where you can organize mailings about promotions, unique offers, etc. in the future.

Stop! We have already talked about another channel to attract a client.

5. Email Marketing and Mailings

They say e-mail is dying... Maybe in the future it might become true, but not now. Sending promotional offers also pays off. It is important to correctly compose a commercial offer and the subject of the letter in order to increase the percentage of reading it.

Don't forget your old clients! They are still alive! :)

6. Contextual advertising and targeting

This is the standard way to find clients online. The first thing that comes to mind after creating a site is .

Customers from the search come interested. It remains to offer them something radically new. You have to be different from other studios. Breaking templates works well, non-standard presentation, that is, everything that catches the eye.

If you make a typical landing page and put ads on it, then the visitor will scroll through the site automatically without noticing either your experience or your achievements. He is just looking for only what he cares about the most.

Draw the visitor's attention to your offer and he will remember you much better. This can positively influence the decision to cooperate with you.

7. Freelance exchange

I think this channel is more suitable for an aspiring freelance craftsman. Here he can earn a portfolio, reviews and grow to a more serious level. In addition, on exchanges, freelancers learn to conduct a dialogue with a potential customer, evaluate the amount of work, adequately assess the cost of services, etc.

Many freelance exchanges protect your transactions, which is also very important for both the client and the developer.

Among the most popular I can note:

• weblancer;
• freelancehunt;
• work;
• Workzilla.

There are others worthy, but we are talking about what we ourselves have tried.

8. Registrars of individual entrepreneurs and LLC

There are organizations that provide assistance in registering new LLCs and individual entrepreneurs. New entrepreneurs turn to them for help. It can be assumed that they need a website.

Visit several of these companies and agree with them that they will recommend you to new entrepreneurs for a certain percentage of the transaction amount.

9. Partnership

Partnership with business incubators works great. Today there are quite a lot of such incubators as "Make Money", "Business Youth", "Genius marketing" and others, less known, but also more accessible. Their graduates, who have just received the “take and do” mindset, are ready to act and it is highly likely that they will order from you. After all, the mentors themselves recommend you.

Be careful in cooperating with students. Many of them are now looking for part-time jobs and are ready to perform various tasks. Are you ready for this person to represent your studio among potential clients?

10. Walking tour of the offices

There is an opinion that a personal meeting with a potential client provides more opportunities to present your service in full color. Indeed, many sales managers prefer a face-to-face meeting and sell successfully.

But, such an approach may turn out to be not only wrong, but even impolite. Wrong, because the decision maker is often absent from the workplace, so you waste a lot of time. And your appearance in a third-party company without prior agreement and without warning will be considered impolite.

For a successful campaign for clients, it is good to use cold calls in advance. Otherwise, you have to be a unique salesperson in order to sell straight away like this.

11. Cold calling

This channel of customer acquisition remains one of the most effective. Thanks to the correct organization of the sales process, every day managers make excellent deals with large companies.

The main thing in cold sales is experienced employees who work for results. How to become like that? There is a lot of educational information. I am ready to recommend you the book by Maxim Batyrev "45 Tattoos Sold". In it you will find at least 45 ways to sell your services, spending less effort and nerves on it. This book teaches you how to overcome customer objections, make them irresistible offers, and bill them for payment.

12. Flyers for offices

Unlike a personal visit to the company's office, handing out leaflets is a completely harmless event. A leaflet left in the office should attract attention. Therefore, the designer should work on it. Whoever opens it must make sure that he needs your services. Even if before that he thought otherwise!

Where web studios find customers - 12 channels to attract customers

It all started in 2009, when I quit my job at a large metallurgical plant, where I earned 10,000 rubles.

To bookmarks

2011: Job offer

I started my website development activity in 2006.
My first sites were made for acquaintances who had to take exams at the Institute of Informatics.

In the summer of 2011, I worked part-time as a bartender in one institution in our small town (240k population).
3 men came up to me at the bar (I was 22, they were from 30 to 40), invited to talk at the table.
There were almost no people that day and I agreed, despite the fact that I did not know these people at all.

They said that they learned about me from our mutual friends, who shared information with them, supposedly I make websites.
One of my future partners made me a job offer in which I become one of the founders of the company and earn 12,500 rubles a month.
Everything coincided so interestingly that after 1.5 weeks I quit, and we began working together to create a company, hire employees, and find premises.

2011: Hard Times

My job was to be a team leader.
A couple of months later, our team had:
1. C programmer, Action Script 3
2. PHP programmer
3. Illustrator aka artist
4. Junior designer
5. Me, team leader
6. Founder #1, Responsible for generating ideas
7. Founder No. 2, responsible for documents and accounting
8. Founder #3, just gave money, maybe ~150k
9. Founder No. 4 (stayed for a short time), just gave money, in my opinion 40,000 rubles.

After 3 months, truly difficult times began, the money begins to run out.
For three months of work, we have developed and launched 2 applications for the social network VKontakte and earned 10,000 votes on applications.
10,000 votes - 50% withdrawal fee = ~35,000 rubles (maybe the numbers were lower).

2011: Website development

I suggested that the founders introduce a website development service.
And at that moment, the responsibilities of finding clients, concluding an agreement, developing a site and handing over the site to the customer fell on my shoulders.
In fact, I did a full cycle of work, for which I received only a percentage.
I was looking for clients on a freelance site and through acquaintances.
After 3 months, we developed 2-3 sites, earning 10-20k on this.

Due to disagreements with the founders, I am leaving the company in which I worked for a total of 6 months.
A junior designer leaves with me, with whom we open our web studio in 2 weeks.

2011: Opening of web studio: hiring of employees

As I said, the first and only full-time employee was Serega, a junior designer. I didn’t have to persuade him, because for the entire time he worked in the previous start-up, he was paid 5,000 rubles. Serega worked for the idea.

We divided the responsibilities and agreed to divide the money 50/50.

I am website programming, hosting maintenance, communication with clients, conclusion of contracts. Sometimes I was looking for clients. Probably, I was still a little more important, because I understood much more in website development than my partner.

Serega - accordingly, he was engaged in design, but since he was a beginner, it was not easy for him. Finding clients, concluding contracts, communicating with clients.

2011: Opening of a web studio: IP design

To be honest, we didn't have any money.
Seryoga sold his old Opel Kaded for 30,000 rubles and invested 15,000 rubles in our business.

We registered IP for my partner.

Of course, we had to arrange everything according to all the laws of the Russian Federation. We opened an individual entrepreneur, opened a current account with Sberbank, it seemed to us the most convenient. We used Sberbank Business Online, it's enough just to transfer money and manage it in general.

For the opening of a legal entity, we gave an order 3 000 rubles.
Opening a current account approx. 1 000 rubles and monthly service 500 rubles.

2011: Opening of a web studio: office search

We considered many options, and of course, at first we wanted something good, cool, where it’s not a shame to bring people. But later we agreed that we just need a place where we can come and work, nothing more. We decided to meet with the client on neutral or on the territory of the client. And given that we didn’t have them at the moment, there was nothing to show off.

As a result, in just a week we managed to find a small, inexpensive and quite comfortable office. The location was good, near the bus stop, so we could easily get there in the morning and after work.

The office itself was 8 square meters, although I don’t remember exactly, and we paid for it 3 750 rubles per month.

2011: Opening of a web studio: search for clients

Finding clients has become a big challenge for us. Initially, we did not really think about how and where we would look for them. What we pictured to ourselves in various discussions has completely become the opposite of reality.

How we started looking for clients and what we used:

1. Calling all organizations in your city and nearby cities. Order 5,000 calls for 9 months.

3. We walked around the city delivering commercial offers to offices, shops, cafes. Total 200 commercial offers.

4. We offered our outsourcing services to well-known and not very well-known web studios in Russia.

Yes, it was not sweet, and especially without money and good knowledge.

2012: Completion of work: debriefing

We worked for 9 months, and things began to go frankly badly.
My partner lost his passion, and I lost faith that you can make a business for 15,000 rubles and scale.

In May 2012, I was invited to Moscow to work in one large (at that time) agency.
I considered this an excellent opportunity for development and already on June 18, 2012 I was in Moscow.

For 9 months of work, we were able to make 6 sites, including 1 online store, 4 visit sites, 1 service for the sale of spare parts for cars.

3 good projects on 1C Bitrix were developed for outsourcing.

Earned: 250,000 rubles.

Spent: 143 000 rubles(rent, additional programmer, trips, mobile communications, business cards, advertising)

Net profit for 9 months for 2 employees: 100,000 rubles.

After 3 years, I will become the founder of my own digital agency in Moscow, but that's a completely different story!