Photo Credit: Natalia Y via Unsplash

What is my marketing plan for next year? To ask for repeat business and referrals.

My wife is very pregnant with our third child.

You know that you have reached the “very pregnant” stage, as opposed to just “pregnant,” when people must point out how disproportionately large a woman’s belly is compared to the rest of her.

Friends, family, and strangers in restaurants cannot help themselves. They chuckle about the watermelon, the ship’s prow, the globe, affixed to my petite wife’s middle.

Of course, the wise husband takes note of the the tired, long-suffering smile on his wife’s face and pulls from a different repertoire. He say things like, “You are so beautiful” and “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

If he wants to be happy, he does not say, “Can we take turns doing the dishes?” Or, “Boy, am I tired!”

As strange as it may sound, the imminent arrival of our third child has reminded me of the importance of having a marketing plan.

Life won’t slow down while my responsibilities pile up. My family’s bills won’t magically pay themselves simply because my wife and I are finding a new rhythm with a newborn and I am dog tired.

Whether or not I feel like working, work will beg for attention.

What’s a sleep-deprived boy to do?

I’ll wake up each day and stick to the plan. I’ll stick to the plan because, at least for the next six weeks or so, I probably won’t have the mental bandwidth to improvise.

A plan helps to keep complexity to a minimum.

You see, a freelancer’s blessing and curse is the complex world of possibilities. Today, you could do this or this or that.

Client project’s will eat up some of your time. Your current freelance projects are an easy priority because they will get you paid next week.

The less obvious priority is finding and implementing the right mix of marketing strategies, tactics, and activities to get you paid next year.

What should you do with your non-billable time?

Lots of folks have pointed opinions on the best (or worst) way to market your freelance business. I’m of the opinion that a bad plan consistently executed is better than no plan or even a brilliant plan poorly executed.

After all, you can find business all over the place. Throw a rock, and you will hit a potential client. The ubiquity of typo-ridden writing, hideous design, and bug-pocked code attests both to the pervasive need for a warm body to perform a service and to most companies’ low standards.

Clearly, you can sell low-quality work, and clearly, you can do it more than once. We’re all somebody’s fool.

You don’t have to be all that good to be better than most. Even a marketing idiot can trip over an opportunity or two by walking down the sidewalk!

My point is, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and execute a breathtakingly original marketing strategy.

Stick to the basics that have worked for other freelancers. Your basic marketing plans should have six key components, and it should fit on a 4”x6” notecard.

What is my plan for next year?

My plan is to double down on what is already working. (Yes, you may address me as Mr. Einstein.)

I’ll keep writing, I’ll speak at a few conferences, and I’ll ask for repeat business and referrals.

Your existing clients, as well as other freelancers, can send you more work, especially if you get in the way of opportunity by keeping in touch. You may only need one question in your quiver: “Do you need help with anything right now?”

Better yet, do what my friend Matt Inglot at Freelance Transformation does, and schedule a strategy session once per quarter.

Once you ask a series of open-ended questions, such as “What’s your biggest challenge right now?”, you can help the client identify needs that were hiding out in the open. Some of those needs you will be able to fill.

(Feel free to steal my sixteen go-to consulting questions when you can get here.)

Here’s another shocker: The best way to get referrals is to ask for them.

If you’re not already asking for repeat business and referrals on a regular basis, I recommend that you do the following TODAY:

1. Make a list of all of your clients. Don’t try to remember them. Just look at all your invoices from the past two to three years.
2. Check LinkedIn for other business contacts.
3. Add your clients and relevant LinkedIn contacts to a CRM app like Highrise. (The last time I checked, Highrise allowed you up to 250 contacts for free.)
4. Pick 30–50 clients and referral “partners” and create automated reminders to follow up with them every six weeks to three months. You know these relationships, and some people you will touch base with more often than others. Exercise judgment here.
5. Create a referral request email template.
6. Create a repeat business request email template.
7. Read this post on following up without annoying people and develop your own list of “excuses” to connect — not that you really need one.
8. Keep in touch, consistently, for months.

Fancy, huh?

Like most repeatable, effective marketing strategies, asking for new projects and referrals won’t win any awards for cleverness or sex appeal.

Consistent follow-up works. And it is boring. And that’s why most freelancers don’t do it. (They also don’t proactively grow their networks.)

Now you know two of freelancing’s best-kept secrets:

1. Quality matters less than you think.
2. People who are willing to do the boring work and do it well win.

My advice to you? Wake up each day and stick to the plan.

Do you want to get serious about your marketing today?

A good next step is to use my “Attracting Better Clients” worksheet to rethink your marketing and to start connecting with the freelance clients you actually want — that is, the ones who will pay you what you’re worth.

Click this link to share your name and email address, and I’ll send you the download link for the worksheet.