Low-Cost Tips for Marketing Yourself as a Freelancer
Becky Lima-Matthews gives her top tips for how to market yourself effectively.
Being a freelancer (mostly) means being your own boss. But you’re also many other things too, including your own marketing manager. You might get to the point where you can outsource that work to someone like a virtual assistant (VA). But until that sweet day comes, here are a few low-cost tips to marketing yourself as a freelancer.
+ Use your niche
If you’re just starting out, you may be too busy just getting the work in to think about what your specialism is. You can build up a niche over time — it’s possible to do a mix of general and specialist work and you don’t have to box yourself in. However, the advantage of having a niche or two is that it’s easier to target clients in that precise area, and you can be specific about what you’re offering.
+ Be where your clients are
If you have a dream client, follow them wherever they have a presence, and engage with them. Not to harass them, of course — but to get to know how they work and what they might be looking for. It’s easy to roll your eyes at LinkedIn, but it’s really handy for finding out who you need to contact if you want to get hired — and to find out when they’re hiring too.
You can also use it as a way to get to know them, comment on their posts, or answer a question they might be asking. A direct connection like this is a pretty good start to any working relationship.
+ Make sure you’re easy to find online
First of all, think like a client. Having a portfolio full of great work is excellent, but a prospective client has to be able to find it. And once they do, they also need to quickly find out how to contact you. A website is good for SEO (that’s where the old niche comes into its own — if a client needs a videographer with wildlife experience in Edinburgh and that’s you, it’ll help with your Google rankings).
And as Freelance UK points out, getting to grips with the basics like keywords, and targeting what your clients are searching for are essentials for new business. If you’re building a new website, it’s worth looking for hosting like WordPress that has in-built SEO tools like Yoast that makes optimising your site and tracking its stats pretty easy.
+ Build your network and get to know other freelancers
Other freelancers aren’t the competition, they’re the colleagues we don’t see every day. Yes, you might lose out on a job to another freelancer, but you can also be valuable allies to each other, with referrals and passing on jobs when you’re busy. It’s always good to pay it forward and it usually pays back too. Join groups on social media, Slack, professional membership organisations, take part in discussions, ask questions and share advice.
The word networking doesn’t have to mean awkwardly standing in rooms with name tags on anymore (especially as most of it’s on Zoom right now.) Connect with people you have shared work interests with and get to know freelancers in other disciplines too. Then they might recommend you to work with their clients or pass on call outs you might have missed. And if you can afford to spend a bit of cash on professional membership that has a directory, it might just pay for itself quickly — as happened when I joined a charity sector organisation and got a rolling contract a week and a half later. The Movidiam network has a free basic account, with the option to go pro, for example!
+ Try the direct approach and do it regularly
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was to contact clients directly to get more work. It’s simple and it works.
Keep a regular list of prospects, starting with 50 or so, and work your way through them. Make your subject header clear and keep the email copy short and sweet; 150 words or under. Focus on the client too, don’t spend too much time talking about yourself. Explain why you want to work with them, it could be shared values or a creative approach and then show one or two examples of what you can offer them.
Try to find the most relevant contact too, like a Production Manager or Head of Content — firing off an email to a generic hello@myidealclient.com or similar probably isn’t going to get you far.
Finding that info might take a little digging, so start with the website, cross-reference it with LinkedIn to make sure you’ve got the right person, and set up a free account with hunter.i.o which should help get the right email address. You can use free CRM platforms like Hubspot to manage your contacts and replies. But most of all, keep at it, even in the busy times. That way your work life will be less of a ‘feast or famine’ cycle, and more of a pleasantly stocked up store cupboard of options.
+ Collect testimonials and share them
The end of a project can be a great time to do some marketing. Create a short questionnaire for your client, and ask them for a quote about your work or LinkedIn recommendation. It’s much easier to do it while the work is fresh in their mind than following up later. Once you’ve collected a few, add them to your website, social media, portfolio, showreel etc.
Let your old clients tell your future clients what you can do.
