How to find E-Commerce clients for SMMA in 2023

Learn how to find E-commerce clients for your SMMA, no matter if you are already running a SMMA or not, you can benefit from the information listed in this article.

Let’s dive right into:

Preparation

Before we go out and search for potential prospects, we need to know the following things:

• How big should your clients be?
• Are you going to go into sub-niches?
• Do you want to stay local or worldwide?

How big should your clients be?

This depends on many factors. Some of them are:

• How experienced you are in the service you’re offering
• How many testimonials/happy clients you have to show
• How overall big your SMMA is

If you’re a beginner, it’s best to stay with smaller companies with around 1-5 people. You can make these companies a great offer in return for a testimonial and maybe some further recommendations.

Suppose the prospects you’re contacting are too big for your scale. In that case, you’ll mostly encounter rejections and doubt since these companies get tons of messages from other, bigger, and more experienced agencies.

Is it worth going into small niches?

E-Commerce is a huge niche to be in, with lots of competition and opportunities. Have you ever considered going into a sub-niche like vegan skincare or oversized clothing?

That’s a great way to work your way up into broader niches and show other companies your expertise and performance.

You also need to keep in mind that you’re limiting yourself to a way smaller group of companies/prospects. I suggest starting research (e.g., keyword volume analytics) on the sub-niche you want to start with.

Do you want to stay local or worldwide?

I personally started off by contacting local prospects that speak my language. This approach has many advantages, like often having the same culture and instantly being more trustworthy than someone who cold contacts you in a different language.

The obvious downside to this approach is that you’ll limit your count of possible prospects to contact, but given your niche is acceptably big, that won’t be a problem.

Ways to find clients

After we’ve cleared some fundamental questions, we can start searching for prospects.

Here are 5 ways to find lots of e-commerce prospects:

1. Instagram

This method is pretty popular but still works great for me and many other SMMA agency owners I know. You just need to stand out from your competition. If that’s something you can do somehow, Instagram is a great way to find new prospects.

Firstly, find 1-5 Instagram pages that fit into your niche or sub-niche, click on their images, and train the Instagram algorithm, so you can get suggestions that fit your niche.

Now you can click on the similar accounts suggestions and find many other accounts that fit into your niche, and you can start contacting them.

But again, you need to stand out from everyone else. Sometimes, I check my client’s Instagram DMs and find many messages with “Who’s in charge of your marketing?”. This cold message isn’t bad in itself, but so many people are using it, which seems more like a scam to most businesses.

2. Google Search

Google also has some quality leads ready for you.

You can either contact businesses that are already running ads on Google and tell them what they could improve or some other opener.

Another method is just finding smaller businesses (again, sub niches are great for this method) and contacting them, just like on Instagram, but with more filtering options.

I suggest filtering for languages. That’s how you do it:

If you go to settings and choose “See all Search settings”:

Click on “Languages” and find the one you need:

Another great trick is using Google Dorking to find similar shops (just like the similar accounts feature on Instagram). Your search query will look something like this:

related:www.google.com

Just change www.google.com to your “perfect prospect” and find similar ones.

3. Google Maps

Google is such a great tool for finding new prospects. Most shops are on Google Maps somewhere. If you’re going for local e-commerce stores, check out Google Maps to find their websites.

Again you can enter multiple different search terms to find a big variety of businesses.

4. Facebook Groups

I often get asked if this method is oversaturated, and my answer is always: Yes.

It’s still a great way to find prospects. There are many groups out there where people need help in marketing or are directly looking for an agency. Obviously, these people get many cold messages. You just need to be the most handsome and most professional-sounding of all to land clients.

5. AgencyLabs Lead Generation

AgencyLabs offers lead generation at another level. Using AI, we provide a high-quality lead source for our customers with many different languages and categories to choose from. We make sure that our leads aren’t big cooperations who already have their own marketing department to increase your likelihood of closing clients.

Get 100 leads for free here.

What is the best method to convert a prospect into a client?

I’ve mentioned this multiple times in this and other articles:

Stand out from the competition.

Every e-commerce store receives emails, DMs, and calls multiple times per day from other agencies wanting to offer their service. Do you know why many stores still don’t have an agency employed? It’s trust and uniqueness that most of them lack.

So, go out, be unique, and offer something nobody else (or at least few people) offer. Operating in the same country as your prospect and speaking their language natively is a great way to give at least some uniqueness to your message.

Summary

• Prepare and find your “perfect prospect”
• Filter your search down to language or small niches
• Try out different ways to find clients and see what works best for you
• Be unique