Freelance Advisor founder Darren Fell is a successful entrepreneur and all over the first page of results when you Google his name. We asked him to share the secrets of his success and he responded with this guide to marketing yourself.
Marketing yourself for free, a guide.
The big question running through everybody’s mind when they jump into Freelancing is ‘where is the work going to come from?’
Of course if the key decision right at the beginning is to become a contractor then you’d clearly expect the agency you select to undertake all of your marketing. But if you’ve made the decision to be in charge of your own destiny and you don’t want to be sent half way up the country on a job, the life of a freelancer is made or broken by the success of their own marketing and PR.
Marketing yourself cleverly and without spending a budget you simply don’t have is one of the biggest initial hurdles to get over at the beginning of this new life of freedom. Of course, you may already be an experienced freelancer and the once trusty and consistent work flowing from your customers has suddenly dried up it’s now time to get that pen and pad out and map out a marketing plan to get you noticed and ultimately get you work.
The fundamental thing you have to remember is that you don’t have a sales team, nor a marketing manager and certainly not a PR person - so get this: You are all of those people and you’ll have to change like a chameleon from one mode to another to be truly successful.
So are you ready? Work through the following step-by-step guide and, with a little patience and a good helping of persistence, you’ll be well on your way…
Read on for five freelancing fundamentals for self-promotion…
1. Creating the ‘you’ brand – the key starting block
You, like Coca-cola or Virgin, can be a brand in your own right.
Let’s look at this for a second. Could your name be your brand name? Why not? Your name is a perfect starting point in this process and if it’s difficult to pronounce or overly long then consider using your nickname.
For example, a programmer by the name of Dave Stone decided to use the brand name of ‘Built by Dave’. He went onto get a web site under the domain www.builtbydave.co.uk and for him this personal branding has been incredibly successful.
This is a great example but if you strive to create a strong identity and maybe even go to the lengths of getting a logo, either done by yourself or for a few pizzas and beers from a designer buddy of yours, you’ll have a strong foundation to build on.
Associate this brand with a strong skillset, combined with the fact that many people know you in the market place through networking, your brand will propagate and you’ll eventually start achieving the ultimate marketing success – business from word of mouth.
2. Your ‘elevator pitch’ – understanding and selling yourself
Now you’ve chosen your brand name, it’s all about ‘selling’ yourself correctly.
Your potential customers need to understand what you do quickly and succinctly so this important step gets you to ‘simmer down’ the description of your offering so that it makes instant sense to the person buying your services.
Remember that often the buyer of your services may not understand technical jargon so keep it in plain English. Make this description complicated or long-winded and you’ll have a difficult time selling yourself.
So how do you do it? Simple, you need to concoct a simple but powerful single sentence that describes precisely what you offer. Here’s an example, starting with my title:
‘Experienced Entrepreneur and Business Start-up Consultant’
‘I build brand new businesses with pioneering products that turn industries on their heads, demystifying technology with the same underlying principles: simplicity of use, visionary feature sets and the best support at a mass market pricing point’
This is when the pen and pad of paper come in handy. List out the services you offer, build them into a single sentence and perfect it. It will take time but once you’ve mastered this, you can use it everywhere; on your website’s homepage, the top of your CV and it can be used as the ‘one liner’ you deliver to people when you are networking.
3. Directories/online listings – the start to getting yourself out there!
This approach is simple, list yourself everywhere that’s free and if it costs money only do it if it’s a perfect location for you.
Where should you start? Well let’s first look at a key location where the PCG (Professional Contractors Group) has built a group of over 1,000 other freelancers, consultants and contractors: it’s a site called www.linkedin.com.
LinkedIn, if you haven’t heard of it, is a superb online location for professionals to create a profile and network electronically, building a cross section of good contacts ultimately to gain work.
The first step is building this profile, so sign up and list as much detail about yourself as you are comfortable doing. The more that’s there; skill-sets, programming languages and past work or portfolio, the more saleable you will become. Remember of course to use your well honed ‘elevator pitch’ statement you spent so long perfecting back in step 2.
As a last point, don’t forget to upload as professional a shot of yourself as you can. The old adage of ‘people buying people’ is never truer here and a picture will help convey the ‘real you’ and may help people to go to that next step and get you in for a meeting.
There’s also one very useful advantage to a good profile on Linkedin.com and I’ll talk about in step 5 – your website.
So now you’ve got a taste of placing your profile out there so you can be found, have a look closer to home. Are there any local listings that you should be resident on?
4. Networking – meeting contacts that can help you
Although I’ve mentioned Linkedin.com – a modern-day networking method – good old fashioned networking, meeting people face to face can achieve so much more.
Yes, I agree, some networking events can be mind-numbingly boring while others can have such a strict set of rules they are positively scary. Bite the bullet and get out there; this is the ultimate place to work your newly practiced elevator pitch and achieve results.
Start with searching on Google to find the most appropriate events in your area, check with past colleagues or even post a question to your new network on Linkedin.com and you’ll find somewhere.
Once you are there, work the room as best you can, spending as little time with each person to meet as many as possible, and only spending longer with someone if they are really promising.
Grab lots of business cards, while handing yours out and make notes on the back of cards if you need to remember key facts. The biggest key point is to follow up fast, the next day with an email or a phone call if there was a hot lead.
5. Website – your presence on the web
Many of us dream of a web site that looks slicker than a Levi’s ad. Now while it’s important at some stage to have a killer site with every bell and whistle possible, especially if you are a designer, the first website needs to perform a purpose, to present you well and show your skill set, so get it up and running quickly.
On that point here’s a very quick way to get a perfectly presentable site up and running, re-using all that effort you put into your profile on Linkedin.com:
Add a public profile to your account which gives it an easy web address, for example: http://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenfell
Go to any domain name registry service online (I’d recommend www.simply.com) and see if your brand name is available. If it is, perfect, if it isn’t try the ‘.co.uk’, the ‘.net’ or even the ‘org’ version.
Once you’ve found one, buy it and direct all the traffic to the web address of your Linkedin.com public profile. Simple and in minutes you’ve created a professional web presence that you can direct people to and be found at.
So there you have it, my top five marketing tips, all on less than a student’s monthly grocery budget. The key is to never give up – persistence is the name of the game and if you follow this, I can promise you’ll start off on the perfect footing.
Do you have a question for Darren? Do you have your own advice and tips to share? Be sure to leave a comment below…
Darren Fell is currently setting up a revolutionary accounting system called Crunch.co.uk. He is also the founder of Freelance Advisor.
image by FelipeArte
