Small Business Marketing Does Not Work for Freelancers
Walk in to any book store and you’ll see a whole shelf of books on marketing, many of which target small business owners and entrepreneurs.
There aren’t many that are written specifically for freelancers, though, but I’ve read quite a few of the small business books based on the idea that freelancing is just another kind of small business. But when it comes to marketing, freelancing isn’t entirely identical to any other type of small business.
1. Starting Freelancers Tend To Bootstrap
Many small business owners take out loans or have other sources of money that enable them to put money into marketing from the day they open their doors. While some freelancers have savings or some sort of capital to get them started, they’re far more likely to start with little more than a computer. That means that freelancers usually take a different approach to marketing. Where a widget store will purchase a significant amount of advertising right off the bat, a freelancer will be more likely to focus on networking, content marketing and other techniques with lower costs but higher time commitments.
2. Freelancers Don’t Want To Work More Hours
A small business selling a product wants to move more units of that product, and its marketing is planned with that goal in mind. But a freelancer is looking more at quality over quantity: there is a limit to the number of hours a freelancer can really work in a day. Instead of trying to work a 24-hour day, most freelancers find it more realistic to focus on landing projects at higher rates. These very different goals are not always reachable with identical marketing efforts: a store may just need to reach more people to increase its income, while a freelancer might focus on reaching the right people.
3. Freelancers Delegate Less
While I don’t have numbers at hand, most freelancers don’t seem to plan to hire an employee or bring in a consultant as a matter of course. In contrast, many small business owners seem to have hiring help to take over the day-to-day duties of their businesses as a central goal. That means that marketing typically happens only after any paying work on hand gets done — it still gets done, but it isn’t always a priority. Freelancers have to pick and choose marketing projects that will fit into an existing schedule. It’s certainly not impossible, but a freelancer’s approach to marketing still looks quite different from a small business owner’s. None of these three issues are universal, of course, but they do mean that following a small business’ guide to marketing isn’t going to be the easiest approach for most freelancers.
Marketing From a Freelance Point of View
Marketing books can provide a freelancer with a starting point, but they shouldn’t be taken as gospel. Instead, it makes sense to pick and choose marketing tactics that will work not only with your budget, but also the time you have available and your goals in terms of work. Will an ad let you reach a prospective client who you actually want to work with? What about writing a blog? Not every approach is going to help you move your business forward — some work only when a brute force approach is taken, throwing time and money at a marketing campaign to create a result.
Don’t stop reading marketing books, blogs and other resources, though. You never know when you’ll find an idea that really works with the freelance business you’ve built.
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A good article, I can already relate to this from the very little I’ve done outside of my main job, and am going to have to think hard about how to handle things better moving forward if I am to take freelance more seriously.
Thanks.
Too true, if I’m in a bookstore and see a startup business book I’ll often give the pages a skim, but all they tend to aim at structuring your business, marketing etc, it’s a pity there aren’t more aimed at freelancers, maybe I should write one =P
The massive growth in freelancing will no doubt lead to an increase in books tailored for the industry in the near future. Fortunately, we have the Internet to cover the shortfall in traditionally-published materials for now
Right on. In my experience, being a successful freelance writer is a matter of time, building a portfolio, and maintaining clients after you first get them. Also some local marketing through business networking.
Great post with real insight. You hit the nail on the head.
This is exactly right and it is a perfect example of the outsource model of business that is growing and creating the demand for freelancers. Doing everything yourself is inefficient and much less effective than having highly focused experts do the work. This applies to freelancers themselves! They need to concentrate on their business expertise and outsource the rest (e.g. web development, SEO, and other marketing).
Excellent observations, Thursday! You have crystallized much of the vague dissatisfaction I often feel with the marketing newsletters I receive. Your point about not wanting to (or being able to) work more hours and serve more customers is especially on-target. Thank you for this article!
Time is the only commodity that most freelancers really have to sell. I’ve found that automating as much of my marketing as possible helps make the most of my time. Setting up personal sounding autoresponders and using customer relationship management software to automatically send out newsletters saves me a ton of time.
So true. Working on projects is so time consuming so it’s best to try to get the most buck for your bang!
Okay, here’s Martha to thump the outreach tub. Again. I strongly recommend that you work some cold and warm calls into your marketing mix. Likewise, cold and warm e-mails.
True, a lot of people are going to say no to you. And the “yes” answers may take months, if not years, to come.
However, you’ll get very good at describing what you do in as few words as possible. And you’ll develop a sense of fearlessness that you never had before.
I’m just starting out now, and your points are true, although during this startup phase I’m working more hours (my day job during the day, my new site/promotion etc during the night). That’s not a problem though as I’m motivated to build a client base.
I’d love to be able to delegate, but haven’t sat down and worked out what it is I actually need to delegate, let alone tried to find someone to delegate it too! I know about sites like elance etc., but my problem is that I am unsure what I need, so I can’t employ anyone do it! Catch-22!
I can certainly relate to that. Here’s a tip. Freelancers usually trade time for money. As freelancers, we usually don’t have much time. A solution to that is automating our marketing through the internet. Of course, the only problem with automation is that it is impersonal, and as freelancers we are usually selling ourselves. So while it is a good idea to automate the process by which prospects FIND you, it is also important to constantly engage with your prospects through social networks such as facebook and twitter. If your freelancing is on a project-by-project basis, you may have to engage your prospects more often then if you offer a regular service where your clients have to pay you every month. Therefore, another tip is that if you in fact offer services on a project-by-project basis you should also find a service which you could offer monthly. For instance, if you are a webdesigner, you could offer hosting and maintenance for a monthly fee. That will help you keep your cashflow more consistent and free up some time for more marketing.
I agree that the typical entrepreneurial model is not a good fit for a freelancers. In my years as a full-time freelancer, almost all new business has come via word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals. However, there are ways to help things along. It pays to keep in touch with people you’ve identified as potential clients — sending them articles they might find interesting or just saying hello on a semi-regular basis. The idea is to be top-of-mind when the need for a writer comes up. Beyond that, here’s a link to a summary of coaching event I attended recently. I found it very helpful. http://www.nywici.org/calendar/NightoftheCoaches.html
@Martha, I think that outreach can be a worthwhile part of an overall freelance marketing campaign. I would suggest that freelancers actually have more opportunities to set themselves up for warm connections than many small businesses.
Thursday, I completely agree. There are very few resources out there that are relevant for freelancers – especially in the areas of starting a business (that doesn’t require a lot of capital) and marketing, since many of the materials are pre-Web 2.0, pre-content-is-currency, pre-smart phones, etc.
Our company (Reach Group Consulting) is focused on marketing and primarily consults with large Fortune 500 brands. Over the last couple years, however, we have shifted our focus to Free Agents and have been studying the smartest freelance brands and their business models.
We realized that the top free agents were operating differently than the majority of freelancers and that there was a pattern to the strategies that they were using to build their businesses. These strategies included working multiple income streams around a core business, using content and social media to gain credibility and profile, carving out a niche by adding heat to their business concept, packaging services and products around solutions, etc. We put our learning into a multi-media toolkit that we call, “The Free Agent Formula.” To learn more, you can download the first chapter here: http://www.freeagentformula.com
A book I’ve found to be useful is “The Designers Guide to Marketing and Pricing” by Benun and Top. It gives advice tailored more toward an individual designer, instead of a small business, including networking to emailing advice, etc.
well, I guess it depends on what services does freelancer provide, but I agree that not ALL small business marketing work perfect for freelancers, but some do.
This article is to the point with freelancers. There is a lot of time involved with marketing yourself and getting the projects, and when you do you add even more time consumption and you find yourself working more than you did when you were working for someone else. I really good thing to consider when you do get more projects coming in and stay in the marketing phase is to hire a virtual assistant and show them what they need to do. Really, it can save you time and it’s pretty affordable.
The best strategy for marketing for your free lance buiz is to play it smart and steady. You have to screen out where clients are and then opt in for a consistent approach .. It pays off by the end.
I don’t know. I find that you need to do both small business style marketing through advertising as well as interesting and new web 2.0 and a lot of conferences.
I find meeting people face to face is the number 1 best strategy. I consider it a time to socialize with people of common interests and often you find people who need your skills.
I think its all about targeting and experimenting to find the best result.
Beware of the trap of believing that you are alone and utterly unique.
Freelancers are basically independent professionals. Independent professionals such as attorneys, doctors, and CPAs have been around for centuries.
They may not do creative work as the freelancers on this board do, but you should ask yourself how they how they organize their businesses and how they gain a client base. (This may fly in the face of the instincts of “the creative” to believe that they are a special snowflake.)
The same dynamics apply:
Bootstrapping – the value of capital (aside from seed money to live off of) is almost negligible in the early stages. IE: advertising – a typical high expense of brick and mortar businesses – is almost useless because you need so much advertising budget to make a real impression that a small budget is almost assured of being a throw-away. And equipment needs are limited, aside from a PC, broadband, etc.
Working more hours – ideally, your rate rises as your available time is saturated. If you are fully booked with a waiting list for new work, you need to raise your rates.
Freelancers delegate less – OF COURSE. Clients are purchasing *your* expertise and personal image, not hiring faceless “resources” under your wing. That’s why you need to attach a suitable valuation to your time.
Marketing – it’s all about personal contacts and follow-up. CPAs in private practice are probably the closest to freelancers in terms of similar dynamics of being recognized and hired. A CPA near me mailed out a personalized letter soliciting new clients – he probably scrubbed the list of local small incorporations from the state to get my contact information. If I did not already have a CPA I would have been in contact with him.
Those are three great points. I’ve never really thought about it before. I’d like to get some feedback on using a Google adwords campaign. Since you can control the budget so precisely it seems like it may be a good avenue to bring in business for individuals. The flip side would be that the kind of leads you get from search engines are most likely going to be a pain in the rear I’ve found. Usually cheap skates. although not all of the time.
Great article and very relevant, thank you.
Actually I think a lot of the past damage to the web design industry (of which we’re still picking up the pieces) comes from applying a typical small-business model to web design. Just think of those nasty little web design chop shops we’ve all worked for at some point, and their focus on pushing a high volume of work out with no regard for quality or standards – using a traditional marketing model of quantity over quality.
The same thing is also (imo) largely to blame for client’s playing Designer because the chop shops let client’s change whatever they wanted because it was faster that way = more turnaround.
It’s just wrong on so many levels and the result is a web littered with ugly, unusable websites which don’t even begin to meet user’s or client’s needs.
Web must be about quality – user’s lives are just too busy for them to tolerate anything less. At least now the industry is beginning to be lead by professionals who understand this and we can begin to repair the damage done by past businesses who operated on a traditional quantity-over-quality small business marketing model.
Harmony
Think referrals. If you’re looking for quality over quality then referrals from other professionals that know you and trust your work is the only way to go.
Most successful freelancers will tell you that having other people that are familiar with the quality of your work advocate for you is the single most important source of new business.
Chris O.
Referral Key
Your trusted referral network
I apparently am the only naysayer here. I was vastly aided by any number of books when I started freelancing. The key is to find books devoted to freelancers (especially freelance writers), instead of general marketing books.
When I teach my magazine writing class, I highly recommend “The Magazine Writer’s Handbook,” one of the best I ever read for getting published AND getting paid decently. If you’re seeking more commercial work, there’s “Secrets of a Freelance Writer” by Bob Bly, and “The Well-Fed Writer” by Peter Bowerman. Both offer advice on low-cost ways to market oneself, how to choose your targets (even in small towns) and much more. Bowerman has a great website and monthly newsletter, which you can find here: http://www.wellfedwriter.com/
Don’t give up hope! There is help out there. Of course places like this help too. Thanks.
Hey Wendy, I don’t think the author’s intention was to say there’s nothing out there at all for freelancers — just that the vast majority of books on business marketing out there are aimed at small business and aren’t helpful to freelancers, who require a different approach to marketing. That and the fact that there are precious few good books on freelance marketing (some of which you mentioned) makes it tough for the neophyte to find good advice.
Slow and steady is the key I think