Want To Start Digital Marketing Freelancing Or Agency?
Well you will never regret if you knew this!
Every advertising professional dreams of starting something of her own, to create awesome creative stuff for their clients and feel the orgasm of delivering ROI. This all has its own joy! but when you do business you also need to ensure that you are constantly growing and making enough money to stay motivated and invest further more in your business and skills.
When i started Freelancing last year, i had nothing in hand, the clients i was relying on with hope of more business from them, actually left once i started doing it full time. So i had no client, i was job less, had no money, i was newly married with lots of debt.
Fortunately, i ended up getting a UAE based client from Linkedin, and he was a startup. I thought that i will focus only on this client to excel. Then after 2 months i got one more client which was again a local startup. Whole 1.5 year i burnt my self like anything, face lots and lots of challenges. Business is very unemotional entity, it doesn't have any mercy for you, that’s why even after investing billions of funds, most of the startups fail, all you can do and you need to do is to stay patient and keep working.
I learnt certain things that i would like to share with you
1. Your Portfolio
Yes everyone needs a good portfolio, but some people judge you the basis of your confidence, trustworthiness and passion they see during meetings. Building portfolio should be your personal agenda, never discuss it with any prospect otherwise he or she will not pay you well for that job.
2. Become Our Partner
You will meet such startups who rather than giving you fee would be willing to give you a percentage share on sales. You should never work without any fixed fee, doesn’t matter how interesting that startup seems, time is very important and most of the startups fail. Also if any startup can’t pay you then it means that particular startup is already low on cash.
3. Look At The Deal Closely, That’s It!
it doesn't matter whether the person you are working with is a startup or any established business. What matters is your offering and the client’s willingness to pay you the money on time. That’s it!
4. Take Advantage of High Times
The moment when you realize that you are doing good business is not the time to settle down. It’s is the time when you should push yourself more and invest money in business to expand. Hire more sales people and simultaneously the other supporting staff.
5. Systems
Take this word too seriously, without right system and skills to organize, you will never be able to grow consistently, which means you will collapse again and again. You need to have a vision for your future because when you work at any company full-time, then it’s the company’s responsibility to think about the growth of its employees but in business nobody will think for you, you will have to for yourself. System could be any for example: How you will ensure that after a few months you not go short on leads?so you need to create various lead streams and revenue streams eventually.
6. Million Dollar Opportunity
Something interesting this generation has is the ability to push self created content. If you have any skill in which you master, then you can do your personal branding on various mediums. Writing is one way to do so, but if you are not good at it, then you can actually create good videos, podcasts etc.
7. Your Client Mix
Try to reduce the no. of clients who suck up more time and pay you less money, follow 80:20 rule, which means generally 20% of your clients give you 80% of your revenue, so never stop focusing on them specially.
8. Learn To Say No
Not every person is your client, you will understand this eventually once you will decide your comfort zone and priorities. Saying no is not a bad thing, you can tell them that at this moment we are not in a position to fulfill your expectations, we can still help you in some ways like XYZ(some low ticket service for the same query, for example: Marketing Ideas for your business promotion)
10. Stay Optimistic & Patient
Optimism & patience are the currencies of entrepreneurship, never take impulse decisions and feel depressed due to failures. First and the most important thing is that we all fail and we do everything to save ourselves from the failure of life, this fear of big failure gives us motivation to take risks and fail 100 times to make a successful life in long term. Best way to beat fear of failure and impatience is to sit alone for a few minutes and think that why am i scared? What can i do to ensure that this particular situation never happens again, make an action plan for it and change the direction of your fear from depression to optimism. Make it a habit, you will spend less time in sadness.
11. Keep Pitching Brands
Never stop or never feel shy of reaching good brands, doesn't matter at what place you are, if you are good at something then pitch your services to big brands. There are only 2 possibilities, either they will convert or they will reject you. If they reject you, you will learn if they accept you, you will earn!
That’s all my friend, i wish you a great success in professional and personal life!
