My last post on LinkedIn has been viewed by 76K people so far. Upon this post, I started to receive questions and messages about how I started my own business. I was also asked if I would write a blog post. I wanted to write about my own experiences with it.
How I Started My Own Business? How I Found My First Customer?
I would like to help those who want to enter digital marketing or start their own business, and I hope this article will be useful for those who want to find their first customer. It’s been a long post. Sorry about that 🙂
Happy Reading….
I’m a Computer Science and Programming graduate. While I was studying at the university, I started working in a call center at a corporate company. Again in the same company in 2012, I continued my corporate business life as a Database(SQL) Specialist. I quit my job when I realized that my interest is not database. Then I started working as an Internet Marketing Specialist in a network agency in 2014. And I enjoyed my work very much. This has increased my interest in this profession.
I resigned from my job even though I was working with a very good boss. After trying a few job interviews, my dream of being connected to a burning place in me, producing something, and starting my own business overtook me and I decided to do digital marketing consultancy and website designs. Using the advantage of being a software graduate, I started to make WordPress and Shopify based websites.
Meanwhile, I had an e-commerce experiment and unfortunately failed. It was a bad experience because I am not very experienced in digital advertising and I could not allocate an advertising budget.
During this time, I received various trainings. After I quit my job, I continued training. I still continue. The training of this job never ends, you have to keep yourself updated all the time. I followed the articles. I did a lot of research from foreign sources, watched videos, and received training.
However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that the hardest part was finding clients and preparing my mind for it. Unfortunately, freelancing or starting your own business is a huge risk. Getting out of your comfort zone can be scary. You need to prepare your mindset accordingly. To get out of my comfort zone, I decided to take risks and work as a freelancer and do e-commerce.
Then I had a camping experience for 3 months due to my husband’s job. I spent 3 months in a 6 square meter tent. This is an incredibly scary situation for me. But this way, I got over many of my fears 🙂 To be honest, it was an incredible experience for me.
In these 3 months, I focused more on e-commerce and had the opportunity to observe myself. Being in nature and having a lot of time turned into an advantage for me. I took advantage of this advantage.
Therefore, I started taking extra trainings and reading books on this subject in order to change my mindset. This has helped me improve a lot. There is a big difference between Ilknur in 2014 and Ilknur today. It changed many things for me. New experiences, and new excitements, no matter how scary, are just as enjoyable.
After solving the mindset part and increasing my digital advertising experience and knowledge, I needed to find clients for Digital advertising.
So, how did I find my first client?
This was the hardest part of the job for me. After 3 months of camping experience, we returned to Istanbul and moved to Ayvalık a few months later. The difficulty of the job started in Ayvalık.
We settled in a small town like Ayvalık and it was much more difficult to find new customers from here. They want to meet you face to face, but you can’t go and see you all at once. If you don’t live in Istanbul, your job is twice as difficult if you live in a small city like me.
I started sending hundreds of emails, dozens of phone calls, and hundreds of LinkedIn messages. Slowly, I started to talk to companies. At that time, no one was willing to meet online. I finally understood and started working with a company. But because I wanted to establish my company, I continued negotiations with companies.
Meanwhile, I started to go to Istanbul, Izmir, and Çanakkale. Because; They want to meet you face to face. This started to be both tiring and financially challenging for me.
But I started working with new companies. It’s nice that everything is going well, you are happy that the companies have started to arrive, but things are not that simple. I started to keep silent about the companies you talked to, and I started to lose the existing ones (they gave up either for economic reasons or because they didn’t give due importance to digital advertising). Thus, some companies came, and some left 🙂 This process continued for a while.
That’s the risk of your business; You may lose customers and have financial difficulties. I’ve come a long way to the point of giving up. I thought a lot about going back to Istanbul and starting to work with a company and getting rid of the headache. But I continued. Because; This was my dream and I had no intention of giving up easily.
Instead of writing to each company, I thought that it would be more correct to choose a sector among them, and I narrowed the sector and continued to write to the companies in that sector. I started gaining new customers. Among them were companies I worked for for years. I saw the benefit of narrowing the sector.
I started with the tourism sector and continued with the e-commerce sector. Currently, I only work with e-commerce companies.
Then, I wanted to enter the European market as well. I started to research the European market and wonder about their shopping habits. I started writing to companies in Europe to experience the European market. Again, I continued the traffic of hundreds of messages, e-mails, and dozens of phone calls. And I have new customers from Europe and the United Arab Emirates. It was an incredibly enjoyable experience for me.
One of the most important points for me was the support of my husband. It’s nice to have someone to support you when you take risks. Especially if you are a quick demoralized person like me, having someone support you makes this job more feasible. My biggest supporter has been my husband. Besides being my supporter, he has also been my business partner. Now we work together with companies in the e-commerce sector in Turkey, Europe, and the Arab Emirates. And in November of 2020, we established our own company. We have an advertising agency called DigiVertex Digital Agency and at the same time, we started to set up our own e-commerce company called Luwians. It is currently in the preparation phase 🙂 We continue to take steps toward our dream. There are so many things that we dream of together and wish to happen. And we are determined to bring them all to life. We have new projects. He also has incredible projects that he wants to realize. We will do these projects step by step.
There is a lot to write about, but I wanted to summarize that I do not want to take up too much of your time. It was a very long adventure. Don’t be fooled that it is as short as what is written 🙂 You have to be ready to work day and night, to give up your social life, to take risks, and to experience financial difficulties. You have to forget Netflix 🙂 I still don’t have a Netflix account. I’m not bothered by it either. If you want to go after your dream, you will have to make sacrifices. Be prepared for this…
If you have a dream, go after it, believe in your dream and in yourself…
How do you find your first customer?
Based on my own experience, I would like to talk about 5 items on how to find your first customer.
- Contact the founders/owners of the companies. Now it is very easy to find e-mail addresses.
- Email the founders/owners of the companies. The email with a catchy title and a brief description. Do not write too many details
- Use the LinkedIn platform. (I found most of my customers on this platform) Be active, share, and send messages to companies on this platform
- Open social media accounts related to your work and share regularly.
- Interview companies in Europe.
Follow these 5 items. When you start now, you will see how you are in a year.
And be sure to specialize in one subject. Know a little about all of them, but I recommend becoming an expert on one platform. Either specialize in Facebook-Instagram platforms or Google. Or on different platforms.
If your English is good, try to find customers from Europe, the Balkans, and America. It will provide you with an amazing experience. If you do not have a language, you can also work with Turkish companies in Europe.
Constantly improve yourself and gain experience. Be sure that after a while you will not have to struggle to reach customers, they will contact you.
If you have any questions, you can leave your comments below or contact me directly ?