50 Simple Marketing Ideas All Freelancers Can Use
As a freelancer, you have a wide variety of marketing options available to you. Just which ones will bring you the clients you prefer to work with depends — it’s important to make sure that the methods you use allow you to reach the places prospective clients will be.
It’s worth considering a wide variety of options. For that, it’s useful to have a list of options to consult:
- Start a blog
- Go to Chamber of Commerce events and other local business events
- Release products (icons, articles, etc.) that can be used for free with attribution
- Hand out business cards
- Guest post on blogs relevant to your skills
- Attend meetups in your area
- Place your brochures with printers, or other relevant businesses
- Organize a BarCamp or other unconference
- Network online with sites like LinkedIn or Twitter
- Share samples of your work online
- Respond to press queries on Help A Reporter Out
- Sponsor an event
- Suggest a story to a reporter or blogger
- Offer a coupon
- Create a free ebook and post it online
- Write a press release describing something special about your business
- Offer to speak about your specialty at networking events
- Answer questions on LinkedIn Answers, Yahoo Answers and other question sites
- Comment on articles and posts
- Create package deals
- Develop a partnership with a freelancer with a different skillset
- Send out a useful newsletter geared towards your clients
- Provide a free initial consultation
- Join a professional organization
- Add yourself to directories, both online and in print
- Place promotional items in event and conference gift bags
- Run targeted adds
- Contribute articles to other companies’ newsletters
- Volunteer your services to non-profits
- Contact companies that could use your services directly
- Attend alumni events for your school
- Contact past clients
- Attend events for your ideal clients’ industry
- Join online forums
- Print t-shirts listing your website
- Have a giveaway or donate your time as a prize in someone else’s giveaway
- Survey companies in your target market about their needs (and then follow up on those needs)
- Optimize your website for search engines
- Hand out brochures that showcase your projects
- Get great testimonials from past clients
- Teach a class
- Brand yourself as a business
- Start a podcast or videocast
- Sell your services through affiliates
- Work with an agency
- Swap ads with other freelancers
- Send out a postcard or other mailer
- Package your promotional materials or services with other freelancers
- Tell happy clients that you’ll give them a referral discount for any new clients they send your way
- Celebrate the end of a large project with your client
Many of these options are inexpensive, though not all of them are free. That price tag makes it easier to experiment with your options — so do it! Take some time on a regular basis to try out different marketing techniques and see which ones will work for you — and which ones you can adapt. There are even more options out there than are listed here. If you have a marketing technique not listed here, please add it in the comments.
Excellent list… I especially like the giveaway idea.
As for branding yourself as a business, do you think it’s better not to use your name in branding?
Thanks for sharing,
Cheers.
Great list of ideas! They will really come in handy in the current economy.
You misspelled ads – you put adds.
My best little self-promo item is bookmarks. People may toss my card, but never my bookmarks. They use them, ask if I’ve done a new one, comment that they ALWAYS need bookmarks, ask for more, give them to friends, and on and on. I leave them with the tip at a restaurant, and in my library books I return (my librarian thinks they’re cool, so leaves them in the books!) Everyone now expects me to produce them at a moment’s notice, and everyone I meet and interact with gets some: clerks at stores, people at meetings. (Give 5, they’re cheap!) Even kids like them. They’ve generated leads and interview requests. I’ve also repurposed them as banners on websites to reinforce the message for people who use them to get to my site.
Affordable, fun, useful.
Very useful list. I suggest that individuals prioritize the list for their specific niche and then take action on the top priority actions first.
Wicked list… super-clear, each bullet point is concise, and therefore MUCH easier and quicker to read than an article detailing each strategy. Kudos…
Basically, a bunch of excellent ideas gathered in a neatly-organized pile.
Well done!
In addition to answering questions in LinkedIn, start a LinkedIn group. Groups are great ways to expand your network, assist fellow members of your field and be seen as an expert.
Great post, thanks!
Very nice and inclusive list!
I would ad that going to social events and making a game out of figuring out how to meet people works well, especially in a group. It can be intimidating to just walk up to someone and introduce yourself, but if you take turns approaching interesting-looking groups of people, it can really pay dividends.
nice list. thank you. i have used several of these myself: free initial consultation, develop a partnership with a freelancer with a different skillset are two of the more useful ones for me.
I am actually redesigning my website and updating my promo materials, so these ideas are particularly relevant at the moment.
Excellent list, thanks for sharing! Will take your advice, beginning w/ #19.
: )
Thanks for a great lisr. Saw a couple of ideas I’m going to try myself. May I suggest a number 51: give past clients a birthday coupon with a discount on your service, preferably in a card delivered via snail mail. Thanks!
Great list!
What a great list of ideas! It was nice to see some things I’ve already been implementing (like package deals and networking) mixed in with some things I haven’t tried.
Another good idea — have a sale, or offer a special deal to your favorite clients if they pick up a project with you.
Excellent list, very complete. Indeed it’s much easier to attract customers by releasing free samples of your work first, and participating in non-profit projects. This way your clients will surely recommend you to other potential customers.
@Mario Awad
I spent a long time pondering the same question – do you think it’s better not to use your name in branding?
I eventually came to the opinion that really it’s a matter of what you want to personally want to achieve. There are loads of incredibly successful freelancers marketing under their own name who build a reputation for themselves and win big clients. I think clients who have young ‘cool’ brands like Red Bull or MTV especially like this.
On the other hand, branding yourself as a business can give the impression of size, organization and establishment that some clients are looking for. This allows you to compete for bigger contracts with a bit more confidence.
I don’t think either approach is better than the other – just consider your goals and decide which is best for you!
I have a friend 10 years in business, she is making at times 150-200+ k a year. I asked her if she did any marketing, she answered no, all word of mouth.
Help list of ideas. It’s going to be my to do list now.
Excellent list. It’s amazing how many simple (okay, not everything is snap your fingers done) ideas there really are that we just sometimes forget about.
21 is a NO NO, only if you are desperate for ppl to know you exist. Its like taking the cousin to the prom dance :p
Thanks for the great list. I will keep this page marked so I can refer back to it. You could spend full time just marketing.
How about making a video, whether goofy or interesting? Submit it to YouTube (just one example) and then use it to advertise your services at some point. I expected that one to be in the fifty in the article.
Great List…
Currently I am working on my T-shirt design…
Lot of helpful points are here..
Del.icio.us
Great info.
I agree with just about everyone of them.
I especially like the options that cost little or no money.
I am actually working to start a podcast series very soon.
Thanks for the tips.
This is a really useful list. I’m trying to get my freelance business off the ground and these are exactly the kind of marketing pointers I’ve been looking for.
@RockL. Bookmarks are a really clever idea! Thinking about it, I have tons of bookmarks from various nonprofit groups that always keep them fresh in my mind. That’s a “business card” that really goes to work for you.
Great list of ideas!
I prefer online marketing of my services. because it save time and effective to the targeted audience.
some time i use some forum or PPC adverts too.
Very good list of tips for marketing. Thanks for sharing your views.
@Gus – I disagree with your objection to 21. Collaborating with a freelancer that has a different skillset works in favor of both parties. I often partner with a freelancer that does some design but is predominantly an illustrator. I know more about design and press standards, she is excellent at visual layouts and storyboards. When working on a web project together, we are able to design collaboratively, quickly and effectively – then we work with a programmer to put it all together. It gives us one more piece of the pie we wouldn’t have had without each other – and another sample piece – and another testimonial – and a couple of bucks.
what a great list of ideas, thanks for sharing!
Hi,
Realy useful information.
Thank you.
keep it up….
Regards,
G K mediasoft,
Coimbatore,
India
Really helpfull tips. some of them are very common.But many of them are new. keep it up!
Thanks for this impressive collection of tips. As I am thinking about going one step further in my photography, many of those ideas will come handy.
Great list!
Don’t think there is even 1 thing missing.
Now time to get busy!
Great list!! I think that the one point that most people overlook is branding yourself as a business. It is totally up to you what you want to do. If you just want to work solo this is fine. If you want to expand at some point and hire people, then I think that you should brand yourself as a business. You should consider this in the very beginning when you start accepting jobs and start getting a client list. Later on, once you have a reputation and name for yourself, it will be harder to switch over.
Thanks for that great list of good ideas. Some of them are really useful, but do you think a freelancer can spend enough money to sponsor an event?
Great list.
currently doing #19
Awesome list, I’m going to have to start doing some of these things.
And if you volunteer your services to a non-profit, be sure to ask if you can add your contact info to the piece or at least get a mention in the promo materials for the item you created (like a blurb on the website or in a newsletter when they talk about their “fantastic new _____!”).
Help a Reporter Out is a great service! Thanks for mentioning that one. I signed up!
Great list! I love the comment about bookmarks – I use them tonnes too (so much prettier than folding down a page), and you can fit all the normal ‘business card’ information on there.
Thanks for these
Thanks, great work! I will try the inexpensive points
good work!!
Really appreciate the post
some the point are really new to me like barcamp & coupon offer etc.
Thursday, As always, very helpful list and tips! What makes each and every one of them work is that we keep working them. As Jeremy Epstein says, “Never Stop Marketing.”