Whatever your freelance business, whether you provide a service or create your own products, marketing will probably take up a good chunk of your time. You might not have thought of your website, social media time, cold calling or networking as ‘marketing’ but any time you are spending telling people about what you offer, however indirectly, can be set down as marketing.
Ticking over
Many established freelancers find that it is enough to have a good website with a portfolio of work and a combination of regular clients and referrals to keep them ticking over. In this case, you need to do very little marketing, but what happens if you decide to shift your business to a new focus, create a new product or attract a new client base? Is it enough to wing it with a few updates to your Twitter feed and some shiny new leaflets, or do you want to create a more focused plan to attract new business? And what can you do so that marketing doesn’t take over from your actual work? It’s important for freelancers on a budget to be as effective as possible when it comes to getting their message out there.
Having a plan
If you want to create an effective marketing plan there are three things you’ll want to think about.
Where do your clients hang out? Which social networks are they on? There’s no point in investing time on LinkedIn if they’re all on Twitter. What about industry-specific forums or channels? Do they go to certain networking events, and are they mainly local, national or international? You could try out some new forms of networking, whether face-to-face or virtual, such as forums, events, conferences, or more informal networking groups, such as drop-in business breakfasts.
How do they prefer to receive information? Do they want everything in hard copy, or can you save yourself the printing costs if they like everything to be easily shareable? What about multimedia, videos and podcasts? A mixture could be more appropriate: a hard-copy brochure might get their attention, but after that having a good website with helpful downloads might be more important if they want to come to you. If in doubt, you could survey some existing clients or ask other freelancers in your field what they do.
Expanding your existing materials. You might have a great sales video, but what about adding something new to attract different customers, or sell new products to an existing customer base? Some ideas include: a blog, an email subscriber list for your website, a monthly newsletter, brochures, leaflets, a white paper (which sets out solutions to common problems), podcasts, social media networking, talking at networking events, or a short ebook aimed at helping your clients with common problems they face.
The power of doubling up
If all of this sounds daunting, let alone time consuming, you can double up your efforts for maximum exposure. If you have a sales video, is it on You Tube? And do you promote the link on social media channels? Is it up there on your Google+ profile? What about your blog? The same applies to presentations which can be shared and promoted from Slideshare, and easily embedded into blog posts. Even hard-copy material can work this way if you make sure you have a pdf version to download from your site. Leaflets about new products or special offers can be emailed out as part of your monthly newsletter. Every time you produce something, think about the number of ways it can be shared to reach a wider audience. Just make sure there are links back to your website so that potential customers can find out more.
Stay focused
Although marketing can be a drain on a freelancer’s time, the good news is that much of this is available for very little cost. You can cut down on wasted time by being very clear about what your goals are: write them down if you want to remind yourself. It’s very easy to tell yourself that time spent on social media is ‘working’, but if you keep an eye on what you want to achieve by your time on there, you can try to stay focused.
What marketing ideas are you working on, and what’s working best for generating new leads?
Photo by Steven Depolo - CC
