Market Your Way to Freelance Success
Written by Cedric Solidon on April 1st, 2009 at 9:43 AMIn order to be a successful freelancer, you must know how to market yourself to your prospective clients. But this can prove difficult if you’re starting from scratch and you don’t have that little black book of former clients unlike more experienced freelancers.
So how do you spread the word out about what you do? Here are a few things.
1. Get your family and friends’ help.
You might not have a Rolodex of clients, but you sure have a family and friends who will be more than willing to help you find clients. And they probably know or work with people who might want to work with you.
Say you are a web designer and you have a friend who’s working in a company that badly needs to have their website redesigned. If you tell your friend about what you do, then that friend can refer you to the company he/she’s working for. And with an insider’s referral, you get a better chance of getting hired for the gig.
2. Put together your portfolio.
Your portfolio is a sort of a catalog of all the previous work you’ve done. If you’re a freelance writer, for example, your portfolio may include your published articles and other written material.
What if you don’t have a significant body of work yet? You can start out with speculative or spec work. Spec work is basically just articles or designs, whatever the case maybe, that you created for the purpose of showcasing your skills. Showing a portfolio of spec work will give your prospects an idea of the kind of work that you do.
3. Cold contact prospects.
This is one of the things that freelancers (yours truly included) dread. As one of my college professors said, most writers prefer to sit in their own little corner in a room and just write and not be bothered by anyone else.
But if you want to have ongoing work, you must look for work constantly. The difference between working as a freelancer and in an office is that people with regular day jobs get regular work while freelancers have to look for work themselves and as often as they can. Unless of course if you already have steady clients, which isn’t usually the case if you’re just starting out.
So when you’re starting out as a freelancer, have a ‘hit list’ of prospects that you need to contact. It’s great if you have particular names or contact details, but sometimes, having just the main number in the trunk line would do. Just ask for the department concerned and work your way from there. Once you have that list, contact them. Talk to them. What if the list runs out? Make a new one. Rinse and repeat.
4. Have a website.
Today, having a website is essential in making your marketing efforts a little more efficient. One way it streamlines your marketing is that you can place your portfolio there and you can then direct your prospects to your site when you contact them. You no longer have to physically lug your portfolio to your prospects when meeting them. You can show them your work even before the meeting.
5. Put up a blog.
Putting up a blog is an indirect form of marketing. It doesn’t directly sell your services to potential clients, but it shows that you are an expert in your field – or at least have a good grasp of how to do your work. If you’re a graphic designer, you can put up tutorials in your blog which doesn’t only provide helpful information to people interested in graphic design, but it also gives prospects the impression that you really know your craft.
6. Join a forum.
This is another indirect form of marketing. Positioning yourself as an expert in a particular field in a forum raises your chances of getting noticed by other people lurking there and offering you work. I have gotten a fair amount of well-paying jobs by participating in discussions in several forums.
The list just shows you a few of the things that you can do to market your services. If you have other ways of getting around selling yourself and finding work then hit the comment box below!
So what will you do if you find a prospect who wants to work with you? Chances are they’ll ask you to do a presentation. But what if you have little time to prepare for that? I’ll show you the essentials of doing a client presentation next week. Watch out for it!
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One Response to “Market Your Way to Freelance Success”
By Sarah on Apr 2, 2009
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sarah
http://grillsblog.com