Long years as a marketing consultant have led me to conclude that most freelancers’ lives are beset by two thorny problems: first, isolation, and second, the need to market ourselves and win new clients. Of course, as freelancers we struggle with myriad issues but these two tend to be the ones that we think we really ought to do something about – those that directly lead us to blame ourselves when business isn’t going well and we’re running short on work, motivation and ideas.
Marketing Yourself
What to do when you – and your business – need to get out more
These days with so much business being conducted through computers and texts – often a far more efficient means of communication than phone calls and meetings – it’s easy to start to lose touch with real live people. Your clients may be hundreds of miles away and even if not, they’re probably not the best people to drag off down the pub for a good old bitch and moan. Similarly your family and friends (who are likely to be good pub companions) probably don’t want to hear about your work or fail to understand its finer nuances if they do volunteer a shoulder to cry on.
Isolation tends to strip us of a sense of proportion, feedback (good and bad), and results in an overall decline in joie de vivre. It’s all too easy to bash on in the hope that working hard per se is the same as working less hard at the right things. And lack of human contact is generally linked to insufficient marketing. After all, if we’re not out there putting ourselves about nobody will know we exist – so how do we expect potential customers/clients to find us and if they do, why would they want to buy what we’ve got to offer?
Fundamentally, isolation and insufficient (or nonexistent) marketing tend to be emanate from common foundations such as personality (many freelancers tend towards introversion or introspection), lack of confidence (“good at what I do but rubbish at selling myself”) or just lack of time and poor prioritisation. Or sometimes, particularly for longer established freelancers, it stems from pure disillusionment and disaffection. You’ve tried networking – in all its wondrous forms – and all it produced was a world weary feeling that your time would have been better spent lying on the sofa watching Eastenders. At least you wouldn’t have needed to iron something decent for that.
If you’re one of the “ought to get out of the house and drum up some business but would rather stick pins in my eyes” brigade the answer may be to set up your own business networking group. Okay, put like that it sounds daunting, but all it means is that you organize a group of people to get together with the mutual aim of sharing contacts, best practice, war stories and laughs. Not difficult in itself and because you hold the strings you can set the agenda.
There are no rules, so it’s up to you to decide the format but it may be worthwhile taking on board a few pointers at the start:
- First, don’t restrict the group to people you already know. The most productive way forward is to contact other freelancers or small businesses in your geographical area that you don’t already know and see if you can interest them in the idea. Think allied occupations e.g. if you’re a copywriter, contact designers, printers, translators, photographers, etc. If you circulate a friendly and efficient sounding email they’ll probably be intrigued enough to come along to an initial meeting and after that it’s a bit like dating, some you’ll click with and some you won’t.
- Next, be clear in your own mind what the group is for and how – in general – you think it should run. This doesn’t mean that you have to be a dictator and close your ears to the input of others, but a group without a clear purpose and modus operandi is usually a group that dies a dismal death after only a few meetings.
- Start small. Initially it’s best to get together with half a dozen like-minded people so you can all get to know each other rather than having 40 strangers aimlessly milling about. Over time you can extend the membership as you see fit, but often the closest groups are similar to a smallish crowd of friends who incrementally start to work together and pursue mutual opportunities from a position of trust, shared interests and understanding.
- Finally, try to be innovative and introduce an element of fun. Depending on its meaning for you “fun” can have worrying implications but in the long term deadly dull conversations about work – accompanied by a chorus of whingeing and moaning – aren’t going to tempt people out of their lairs on a wet Monday night. Good networking groups are like good friendships. You find yourself looking forward to meeting up with the people involved and conversations tend to flow naturally as – ultimately – will insider knowledge and referrals, to the benefit of all.
As a way of both making social contact and gaining new business leads and insights this type of networking can’t be beaten. Okay you have to be in it for the long term but it’s low cost, low effort and generally affords a high degree of return and satisfaction.
Not convinced? Why not give it a go and see?
Image by tranchis
