Creating a marketing plan as a Freelancer
By: Alysha Richards
Tags: Freelancers, Freelance Marketing

One of the most important things you should do when starting out as a freelancer is marketing yourself and getting your brand out there. If you have a product/service and no one knows who you are you’re not likely to bring in any customers and therefore won’t make many sales.

Setting up a proper marketing strategy from the start can make all the difference to the amount of work you’ll get coming in! This could be as simple as one social channel and a website or managing multiple social channels with your website supporting. The more effort you put into your marketing strategy the more you’re going to get out of it. So, where do you start?

Start by setting some goals

As a freelancer what do you want to achieve? What does success look like to you? Is it all about gaining brand awareness? Do you want to increase your customer base over the next 3 months? Do you want to be able to raise your rates or work fewer hours in the year so you have more time for yourself?

When setting your goals these should reflect what you consider success and what you want to achieve over a set period of time (around 3 months) — and make sure you can measure your goals as well. Without a goal you have nothing to aim for, setting goals can help create new habits by giving you the motivation to achieve them, as they give you something to focus on and allow you to measure progress.

Find your target audience?

After you have set your goals, you need to find people to sell your product /service to. This is all about finding your target audience. Who do you want to sell your product/service to? And where is your target audience hanging out? Are they currently on social media or are they just Google searching to find your product? If your target audience is on LinkedIn or Twitter then there’s no point setting up an Instagram account and putting in a lot of time and effort for something that’s not going to bring you in a lot of customers.

Find out where your target audience spends most of their time and only set up those social accounts

To find your target audience ask yourself first:

When you first started your service/product who did you have in mind to sell it to?

Is there a product/service currently on the market that’s similar to yours — who are they targeting?

Where are they present?

What problem(s) does your product/service solve?

If you currently have social media channels or a website set up — look into the analytics/insights and see what people are engaging most with your product/service. Once you have a good of the people in your target audience define them even more by asking:

Where do they live?

How old are they?

What are their common interests?

And where are they engaging the most?

This should give you a good idea on what they’re currently searching for and what content you should be focusing on to attract your perfect target audience.

Create your brand

This is where you can have a little bit of fun by giving yourself a name and designing a suitable logo! Setting these up and making your brand more personable to you will make you more motivated to push yourself to reach your goals and get your freelancing or contracting career in action.

Then set up a website where you can share your work and bring your clients in to be able to contact you. And set up your social pages

When writing content for your website and social media channels make sure you’re including important keywords that your customers will be searching for. The more relevant your content is to what people are searching for the more Google is likely to suggest you in search results when your customers search for the product/service you’re selling.

Be engaged

Don’t just set up your website and social media channels and then leave them. Be active! Aim to write at least one post or piece of content for your website. The more content you have (with those included keywords) the more your clients will be able to find you. If you’re strapped for time to create content you can even get away with resharing the content you’ve already posted before — just time these so they’re spread out several posts from each other. Facebook organic reach has only a 6% reach of your followers. So not everyone who followers your page will see the post the first time around.

Another important task is engaging with people on your pages — this will show them that you see them as being important. Engage with people in your niche or target audience. The aim is to get your brand in front of as many people as possible. The more people that see your brand the more they will be curious and have a look at what you have to offer and in turn, even buy your product/service or recommend you to a friend.

Networking

Networking is a powerful way to grow your freelancing business. Get out there and meet up with fellow freelancers in your area. You can find plenty of freelancer Facebook groups, meet up events or even freelancer communities which can make all the difference in building brand awareness, which in turn will bring in more customers, it helps with word of mouth referrals, and they can offer tips and tricks you can only get from freelancers themself — the untold secrets of the self-employed world.

Wrapping it up

With a good marketing strategy in place, it won’t take long for you to see the results pay off for the plan you’ve put in place. A good marketing strategy in place means:

You’ll start to boost your current customer list — rather than having to look for customers yourself, which can be a long and tedious job, having a proper marketing strategy in place will bring more customers to you rather than you having to search for them.

You’ll have more customers coming to you and there will no longer be a need to be listed on those endless job search boards that make you bid outrageously crazy prices to get the work - if anything comes up at all.

You’ll have the opportunity to build social proof and boost your referrals. When your customers love what you do and you have the channels for them to leave you reviews they will be more than happy to. More reviews/recommendations from your customers mean more people are more likely to choose you over someone else!

With more customers coming your way this means you can start looking at that salary you’ve been dreaming of giving yourself and upping your rates.

And by raising your rates you now won’t need to work so many hours in the week and can afford to only work 4 days a week or 3 weeks in a month or even 6 months in a year!

Get started now — the longer you put it off the longer it’s going to take to reach those goals and bring in more clients.