The Quick and Dirty Approach to Marketing

It’s pretty easy to slap together a website, print up a few business cards and declare your marketing efforts complete. But the fact of the matter is that a freelancer’s marketing is never done — if we want clients after our current projects are done, we have to do the marketing necessary to bring them in.

More than a few freelancers struggle with marketing themselves, though. In part, that’s due to the fact that marketing isn’t a big concern for a beginning freelancer. Other issues, like putting together a quality portfolio, take precedence and finding work isn’t as big of a deal as one might think. Between word-of-mouth clients — friends, family and past employers who need a project completed — and low-paying jobs off of Craigslist and other job boards, most starting freelancers can at least find a few projects to work on. But as you advance and want to focus on higher paying projects, marketing becomes crucial. Rather than trying to follow any of the sample marketing plans meant to reassure big business stakeholders, though, you can cut directly to a quick and dirty marketing strategy.

The Marketing Strategy

To get the kind of clients you want, you need a cohesive marketing strategy. Handing out business cards willy-nilly isn’t nearly as effective as finding a way to reach out directly to your ideal client. To do that, you need to put a marketing strategy in place. That’s a project that can take some major hours. There are shortcuts that will let you get directly to covering your marketing needs.

The fact of the matter is that most freelancers don’t need the full out marketing plan that larger businesses rely on. You’re not going to be doing in-depth marketing research to see how prospective clients respond to one advertising campaign over another. But there is some basic research worth doing before you start looking at what strategies will help you best connect with your ideal client. Answering these questions are key:

• Who is your ideal client? Whether your goal is landing big corporate accounts or you’d rather work with small businesses, having a detailed description of your ideal client is crucial to finding them. This description doesn’t mean that you won’t take on clients who don’t fit it, of course, but you will want to target your marketing to this group.
• Who are your key competitors? And how are they marketing themselves? Go beyond writing down names or bookmarking websites — decide what their strengths and weaknesses are.
• What are your resources? If you have a marketing budget, you’re ahead of the game. Also consider what skills you have at your disposal: for instance, can you write your own copy for promotions? Add in what you’re already doing in the way of marketing, like attending networking events.
• Where are you at with your freelancing now, and where do you want to go? Set goals for income, new clients and even firing a few old clients.

Once you’ve got your information in place, it’s time to start looking at your strategic options. Should you focus on social networking and finding clients online? Should you look for events where you can talk to your local community? There are literally thousands of strategies you can take — but only a few will lead you to those ideal clients. Think about where your clients are: a small business owner probably focuses more on attending events in his community than hanging out on Twitter, while the opposite is true of someone working with a start-up. Choosing a marketing strategy is a question of putting yourself in a position to talk to your ideal clients more than anything else. It’s almost always worth picking two or three methods to connect with those clients, as well.

Once you’ve picked out a few marketing methods, it’s time to start implementing them. Treat your marketing like a project you’re completing for a client. Lay out a timeline for specific milestones — if you’re creating a brochure, for instance, decide when you need to have each element of the brochure completed. Get the dates of the events that affect your marketing (networking events you want to attend, conferences, even events you create yourself). Planning out approximately three months can make it simple to reassess your marketing efforts and make sure things are going as you expect — and adjust them if they aren’t. From there it’s matter of putting your plan into action: you’ll still have some hard work to do, but this quick and dirty approach will get you started on marketing sooner rather than later.