3 Killer Ways To Give Your Freelance Work The Business Touch It Needs
If you’ve been active in social media groups, chances are you have bumped against lots of generic advice related to freelancing like me. A leading suggestion of these snippers is to treat your freelance work as a business.
While it’s a solid advice, it comes sans a dive into the ‘how’ part of the process. Over the years, I’ve asked executed the ‘how’ part by asking myself one thing repeatedly, “what would a small business do if it were in my shoes.”
When you see things from such a prospective, a lot changes. Foremost of all, you don’t take things personally when it comes to client relationship management.
Second, you view your service as a product (kind of) and work to boost its quality now and then. This is a great reason to invest some time, if not money, on your professional development.
Lastly, you treat each client as your customer and aim to improve his experience.
Here’s more on the ‘how’ part of treating your freelance work as a business minus the tax, and legal jargon (because there’s already plenty of information on that and you probably already know it too.)
1. Offer A1 customer experience
I write a lot on small business affairs, which means I’m constantly at eye level with scary statistics such as these:
- Customer experience will rank as the chief differentiating factor for businesses by 2020, ranking higher than product and price (Walker)
- Companies in the US lose $1.6 trillion as consumers switch to other businesses due to poor customer service (Accenture)
- 55% of customers are willing to pipe out money for a company that guarantees a satisfying experience (ThinkJar)
While most of us would just turn a blind eye to such numbers, they really deserve a lot of attention from a freelance point of view. Sure, these are numbers churned out from data available on businesses with separate marketing and customer service teams and we’re all but one (wo)man shops.
But, that doesn’t mean that we can’t steer our work in the direction that such research on customer behavior suggests.
Now that I’ve made a case for believing in these stats, how can we improve our client’s work experience?
Here’s what I’ve put to practice and learned so far:
i. Provide quick response
Too much to handle, right? But if a query comes in, take no longer than 24–48 hours to respond to it. Plus, provide complete answers instead of dodging something, assuming you’ll answer it in the next email.
ii. Improve client experience
When I walk in a shop, I’m always noticing how the staff is. This (partially) decides how much time I’d spend there and what I’d buy. While I don’t have a shop, my focus is on ensuring that I do everything that I can for the client. This includes:
- Walking clients through the entire work process, how things will unfold and what to expect from each other?
- Ensuring that I get back with the edits as soon as I can
- Responding as fast as I humanly can because I don’t like it when McDonald’s customer service keeps me on hold for long
iii. Take care of basic things
One of the common concerns that I hear from several people is that freelancers don’t follow the brief or respect deadlines. Read some job postings along with their requirements and you’ll learn how frustrated clients can be about this.
Chances are you’re not among such freelancers but following basic principles is a valuable thing to do:
- Follow all deadlines and if you can’t, discuss with a client beforehand. And try not to negotiate a fresh deadline with a client you’ve only newly acquired unless an absolute emergency has struck you
- Stick with all the instructions in the brief to the tee. If you’ve worked with content marketers, you’d know how much they would appreciate it if you follow the blueprint laid out in the brief instead of following your heart when pouring words on paper
- Be sure to ask any questions that you may have (without being overly annoying) before you start working on the project. It is best to steer clear from assumptions. Remember — McDonald’s never hands you a vanilla ice cream when you asked for a chocolate coated one
iv. Focus on creating convenience and memorable experiences
To this end, try to make working with you as convenient as you can for your prospects and clients. Try the following:
- Be clear about what you do and how you do it
- Provide your contact information at the beginning of your contact page instead of hiding behind a contact form
- Share how you’d submit work and how many rounds of edit you offer
Moreover, since we’re gelling out freelance work with a business model, its best to be clear about your pricing. It should be out in the open, well-discussed, before working on the project.
I’ll admit creating memorable experiences can be tricky though. If you can strike a balance between professionalism and friendliness, then you’ve halfway nailed it here.
In all honesty, however, you need to get creative if you can. A case in point is Jeff Sheldon who runs a clothing boutique for designers, Ugmonk. Sheldon is very particular about the quality of his products and the quality of customer service he provides.
If there is something wrong with the order, he immediately sends a new one without even asking his customer to return the original order. Because he takes care of his customers so well, his customers post pictures of themselves wearing Ugmonk, providing free publicity.
2. Get that website up and running
Your business website is the online business card with more details that a paper version can hold though. I know there are tons of freelancers making good money without a website. That was me as well sometime back.
But getting a website in place has several benefits such as:
- It’s a one-stop place to showcase you work. All thanks to the blog section
- It does the talking for you while you do the work. Credit: the copy on your site about what you do
- It is a place you gather all the leads, whether they’re coming from LinkedIn or other, more casual social media channels
Besides, your blog content shows you off as an authority in your field.
If you’re a writer, you’ve probably already enticed your clients about working with you using research on benefits of business blogging. Now is the time to give yourself the same advice.
And a key factor here is to keep updating your blog to tell your visitors (whether regular or occasional) that you’re well and alive and your business is rolling in full swing.
Here, again, ask yourself how bad a small business looks when its blog isn’t updated. I’m positive you’d cringe and get yourself to hammering out some words for your blog.
Lastly, use a custom email address and signature — very important! Let me explain why with the help of a case study on using a branded email address and signatures block.
The investigators of this study sent out 600 emails. Of these, 200 were sent out using Gmail email, 200 were sent via a custom email address, and the last batch of 200 emails was sent using a custom email address and ended with a signature too.
For the first batch of emails, the response rate was 8%. There were only 16 positive replies out of 200.
In the second group, which employed a branded email address, the response rate jumped to 21.5%. There were 43 positive replies.
In the last set of emails sent via a custom email with a signature block, there were 59 positive replies. This is about three times increase in response rate.
The take home message is crystal clear — use a custom email address and signature to boost your reply rate. And look professional and trustworthy, of course.
If you’re still not convinced, ask yourself, “would you trust a business who emails you from a random email address such as fluffy_cushions@gmail.com?” (To clarify, this email address is just a figment of my imagination to get my point across.)
3. Be careful about your social media presence
In this last section as well, I’ve some interesting statistics to share:
- About 3.3 billion from the total 7.53 billion people on our planet use social media (Statista)
- 71% of consumers who have a good social media experience with a brand tend to recommend it to others (Ambassador)
- 45% of consumers refer to social channels as one of the first places to go to in case they have any queries or issues (Sprout Social)
These stats speak for themselves: you need solid social media presence considering the large number of users and how important they think it is.
The wider you cast your net the better except you won’t be able to handle that unless you hire a virtual assistant.
Why? Because the goal is to establish an actual, engaging presence on the social network that you choose.
You don’t want to make several accounts to add their icons on your website. If you do so, you aren’t doing enough to build any meaningful relationships with your prospects and attract business from social media.
Here are some business-y tips for your freelance social media presence:
- Share valuable content: This quote by Seth Godin in his latest book, This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See is one of my favorites in this context:
“In fact, it’s [the internet] is a billion tiny whispers, an endless series of selfish conversations that rarely include you or the work you do.”
To beat that, share content that is related to your field and reveals what you do
- Be consistent: This doesn’t mean that you’ve to use social media around the clock but it also doesn’t mean that you disappear for days on end
- Separate your professional social media accounts from personal ones. Merging and moving forward won’t work here in the long run because your business account needs to give touches of your personality. It doesn’t have to be an open book about you so much so that prospects may end up disliking a certain aspect or opinion and change their mind about working with you
So, these are the three things that I’ve learned for painting my freelance work in shades of business. What about you? What have you learned or done so far in this regard?
I’m a freelance writer by day and a novel nerd by night. Connect with me on Twitter or read my thoughts here.
