Hey guys,
I'm reaching out to you hoping to gather some insights and experiences from you. I'm new on reddit and not an English native, so please don't be too hard on me.
Background story (can be skipped): In January I've left my job, and co-founded a PropTech startup. We've expected our "beta" to be running and generating sales in May, but due to various circumstances the project is still in development and nowhere near generating any sales. So in July, I've had almost half a year without income and my co-founder and I have agreed that it's fine if I founded another business in order to cover my living costs. Back to employment was no option for me.
So here's my current situation:
Me, being a generalist with experience in startups and pursuing webdesign as a hobby for quite some years, I've decided to found digital agency with a focus on website development for small businesses in Austria (all areas of business). [Here's the link to the site (only in German): https://zanmedia.at] Just shortly after launching this company, I could get my first web development client and everything seemed to be working great. However, after finishing the first project and getting a happy client - I've had a really hard time finding new clients.
It was almost impossible - I've tried cold e-mails and calls, FB ads, Google Ads, FB groups, being active on social media, content marketing, LinkedIn etc. Long story short, I burned all the cash from my first project, worked countless hours on content and got only 1 meeting within 3 months, which I couldn't close. With the pandemic going around, networking events were not available either.
At that point I was pretty desperate, since obviously nothing was working for me, and I started to question my skills as an entrepeneur.
In October, I could luckily close my second client (the father of my first client).
Since then, I have been developing 4 sites for friends & family (for free), just to expand my portfolio. However, no client in sight.
By the end of November, I concluded that I a) totally suck at what I'm doing and therefore am not able to get more clients or b) I am just doing something terribly wrong. After checking the work of sucessful competitors, I regained my confidence. In terms of speed, quality and design, my websites were way better, but equally priced. So I must have been doing something wrong.
I did a ton of research and figured, that I was most likely targeting too locally and not specialized enough. I've created an English website offering my web development services [https://www.zangerle.dev] and an Upwork and Fiverr profile. So far, I have had a couple of promising interviews on there and by today, I am most likely to close another client.
Here's my question / seek for advice:
Besides going internationally, I am planning to offer my services just for a specific niche (as this seems to be the number 1 advice for freelancers). I want to create a ton of useful, value providing content for this specific niche; I am gonna create a sales funnely, laser targeted ads and I am willing to center my whole business just around this niche.
Taking my background, my contacts and my interests in consideration the niche will be either real estate agents or tax consultants & lawyers. My gut tells me to go with tax consultants & lawyers as there seems to be too much competition, and a lot of imposters and fake gurus pon the real estate agent market. My credibility an my trustworthiness have always been a great asset for my, and I think this goes well with tax consultants and lawyers. However, there is almost no competition (at least in Austria) targeting this niche - which is a big, big red flag to me as startup founder.
Nonetheless, I am right now seriously in doubt about this. Am I limiting myself too much with this niche? Since this is a niche where the main source of clients is referall or word-to-mouth - do they even need my services in web development or online-marketing? Should I begin targeting them locally again, or going international from day 1?
I would really love to hear your experiences and I would be grateful for any answer, advice or insight regarding my problem.
PS: If you have feedback regarding my websites, please share this, too.
Thanks for reading all this, and I am looking forward to your comments!
Best regards,
Stefan
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