092323 TR (YT) – worst ways to try to get clients
[00:00:00] There are a million different ways to get personal chef clients, and I have had students who’ve been successful at all sorts of different ones, but There are some that are just not a good fit for this type of business, and I mean a total waste of time and even money. Hey there, Chef Shelly here. I’ve had a personal chef business for over 17 years, and when I’m not cooking for my own clients, I help passionate cooks just like you start your own personal chef business, whether you want to do weekly meal prep services, small catering, or even cooking classes.
If that’s something you’re interested in, be sure to click that bell and hit subscribe so you never miss a weekly video. So the number one worst way to try to get clients for a personal chef business, hands down, [00:01:00] is direct mail. If you have looked into direct mail as part of any other type of business, you might be aware of the statistics of like direct mail to 10, 000 people has about a half a percent contact rate.
Well, from that half a percent contact rate, then do the math on how many would actually even become a client. So the problem with direct mail is First of all, you have to send it to so many people that it is, it’s expensive. It really is expensive. Not to mention your printing costs, printing, postage, all that stuff.
Then not to mention the fact that if you are just starting out and you don’t have like a marketing degree, you might not have the experience yet to be able to really explain your [00:02:00] service to the thing. in a compelling manner to get someone to contact you from the direct mail. And that’s even if they read it.
How much junk mail do you throw away every single day that you don’t even look at? And if you’re marketing to busy professionals or busy families or any type of client like that, do you really think that they’re spending time going through their junk mail because they have nothing better to do?
Overall, direct mail just is not the best place to spend your time and your money when you are, I was going to say even for starting out, but no, I wouldn’t say ever. It’s just not a good path for getting personal chef clients. Now, another type of category, but this is more broad. That was a very specific marketing tactic.
This is more a [00:03:00] type of marketing. And I see people who are just starting out make this mistake all the time. They do this. They only do this. They don’t get clients. They think it doesn’t work and they quit. And that is passive marketing. For example, passing out flyers, passing out business cards. Posting on social media, these are all very passive marketing tactics and they are the weakest ways to get clients.
What you’re basically doing is giving, you know, passing out flyers, especially if you’re not even physically handing one to a person to have a conversation with them or a business card. If you’re leaving a stack of business cards at a gym or a yoga studio, or you’re putting a flyer on a community bulletin board or anything like that.
And this is where the online flip side of that is posting on social [00:04:00] media. All you’re doing is putting something up there and then. Nothing. You have no way of having a conversation with people. You have no way of contacting people. It’s just very passive. I guarantee that you cannot hand out 100, 300, 500 flyers, and fill yourself up with clients doing that.
It’s just very Passive. It almost kind of gets back to that direct mail, right? That are people even seeing it? Are they having the time to read it? It’s just not the best way. When you’re trying to get clients for a personal chef business, which is a very personalized… Personal is even in the description, right?
Personal chef business. The best way to do it is to meet people, tell them about your business, and make an offer to them, right? And you’re not doing that, or at least not [00:05:00] doing that as strongly if you’re just putting out business cards, putting out flyers, or putting out social media posts. Third, the worst way, To get clients, especially when you’re starting out thumbtack Yelp ads, bark, yikes, anything like this in general, I rarely hear from personal chef businesses who have success with these platforms.
Let’s talk about it a little bit more because there are some outliers. There are some people who do get good leads from these. 99 percent of the time though, it’s for catering jobs. So if your personal chef business is focusing on catering, Then that’s great. But if what you’re actually trying to get is personal chef [00:06:00] service clients or AKA weekly meal prep clients, those platforms don’t really focus on that and it makes it a lot more difficult.
And another thing I tell people all the time, if you haven’t gotten clients yet organically for free just by talking to people, Then it might be that adding on top of that the platform skills of knowing how to use it and how to best work their system and the marketing skills to have really compelling messaging that static like that, not having the connection of actually talking to someone when you’re just starting out probably aren’t good enough to get.
Clients by paying for leads. A lot of people when they’re just starting out, think that’s a shortcut. And I hear over and over and over again from people that they feel like they have wasted money on those platforms [00:07:00] because they don’t get leads. They get fake leads, they get increased. They have to pay for, and nobody gets back to them.
Fourth, the fourth worst way to get clients. Again, I mentioned this briefly before is social media. Hang on, bear with me. If social media is one of your marketing tactics that you want to do to try and get clients, first, you need to be consistent. Posting a food pic once a week is not going to cut it to get you clients.
One of the biggest problems with social media, and when I say social media, I’m pretty much talking about Facebook, Instagram. Those are the two big ones. I think that when people talk about using social media to get personal chef clients, they’re looking at, you need to be super strategic because [00:08:00] Facebook and Instagram are global platforms.
When you put a post out in theory, It’s out there to the world, which means 99 percent of the people that see it aren’t even going to be in your service area. So they are not even potential clients. Now, then it starts getting into the algorithm and all the other stuff, which If the only people are seeing it, let’s say you have a hundred friends you’re connected with on Facebook and you put up a Facebook post and Facebook’s only showing it to 15 of the people you’re already friends with, who those aren’t even the people you need to see your posts.
Well, that’s another huge problem. So if you don’t want to take the time to really dive in and learn how to use the platform for a local business, then social media isn’t going to work for you. And this isn’t. The marketing tactic that you’re going to be successful with social media can work for people I have [00:09:00] heard but people need to again do it right learn the platform and use it to have conversations with people I hear all the time from people who have been just posting stuff on Facebook even if it’s a good food pick or an engaging video and it has a strong call to action.
They’re just not getting it in front of local people who would be able to hire them for their personal chef services. So again, to be successful getting personal chef clients, you only have to meet people, tell them about your services. and make an offer to help them. A marketing plan helps you stay focused and helps you know what’s really working as opposed to, well, that doesn’t feel like it’s working.
So, most importantly, do you have a plan? Are you actually talking to people? [00:10:00] Those two things are critical if you want to get clients. faster and easier. If you meet enough people and you tell them about your services and make offers to help them, you will get clients because the clients are out there and they’re hungry for what you’re cooking.
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