Just a quick thought about marketing your freelance writing services today:
Every freelance writer has marketing tools and tactics that “work” for them. And that’s great. But in the end “working” doesn’t matter. It’s not enough for a marketing tactic to do its job. What matters is whether or not it’s the best marketing tool for you.
For example, if tweeting every day brings in two new clients each month, it works as a marketing tool. Congratulations. But that means very little if you could be investing the same amount of time with a different marketing tool that would bring in five new clients each month. Even if you only have room in your schedule for those original two, this is still more effective marketing because it brings more prospects to your door and gives you more choice in the projects to take on.
By all means, don’t do things you completely hate just because it might bring in an extra lead that you don’t really need. But you also shouldn’t get too comfortable in your current routine. Testing is so important in marketing, and just because you found something that “works,” it doesn’t mean you’re finished with that testing. You don’t have to waste time jumping on every fad that comes along, but you shouldn’t avoid options that feel like a good fit.
Have you tried any new marketing tactics lately? When was the last time you evaluated the effectiveness of your current marketing plan and tweaked things to see if you could get better results? Do you remember to test or do you tend to get too comfortable? I know I have a comfort zone of my own, and I’m currently trying to break out of it (one reason I’m running a month-long virtual blog tour all through March). What would you like to try?
Subscribe to 
Connect on 
Cathy Miller
Amandah
Andrew Kardon
Amelia Ramstead
Lori
I agree that you must experiment to find out what marketing tool works best for you. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Try something new. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, try something different.
Talking with others on what marketing strategies they use is just a starting point. Take what seems like will work, then tweak it so it works best for you.
Good point. You can’t base your entire marketing strategy on what works for someone else. Your market is not exactly the same as theirs. Your strengths are not exactly the same as theirs. You need to find the right balance, and it’s okay not to follow every bit of advice or someone else’s marketing plan play-by-play.
Great post Jenn — this kind of analysis is exactly why I stopped looking at online job ads. Yes, after looking at them for hours each week for a year, I found a couple of clients. But the hours involved were staggering, compared with the productivity of doing in-person networking or working my LinkedIn network.
You’ve nailed it. If the time you sink in would be more valuable to you than the work you get out of that marketing, there are probably better options. Job boards are an excellent example.
Something else I like to do which I didn’t mention in the article is to choose at least some marketing tactics that can bring in their own direct income (like blogging and publishing e-books). These tend to be marketing tactics with a higher time investment, especially up front. And the direct income helps justify the time put in whether or not you land enough gigs to make it worthwhile in that sense. You may even end up with strong income streams that you decide to pursue completely outside the freelance side of your business. There are a lot of things we can do to make money outside of clients that can ultimately lead to more clients as well. That’s especially true on the Web. :)
Okay, some of us are just WRITERS at heart. Selling just doesn’t go with our profile. So, in that case, I have found that “outsourcing” can be a good option. What saya?
I would say any writer who isn’t prepared to handle the marketing side of the business isn’t yet cut out to be in the freelance business. It comes with the territory. You could outsource it, but if you want someone truly qualified (as opposed to all the garbage, spam-infested “Internet marketing” services out there), you’d better have a significant budget to invest in that up front. I’d wager that most new freelancers do not. Besides, you can’t really outsource networking. That’s about personal relationships, and it’s an extremely important part of an overall freelance marketing plan. Marketing isn’t all about direct selling. Even if you’re not comfortable with that, there are plenty of ways to market your service — blogging, commenting on others’ blogs, building your network, improving the copy on your business website, offering freebies to attract traffic (like a short free report for your target market), etc.
Thanks for this post, Jennifer; it may prod me to do something new.
I actually am pretty effective (although I don’t do this often) and getting new clients if I send potential clients an email letter of introduction. However, I’m far happier with the results I get from linkedin. For me, I’m pretty passive about it (just put up a profile), but I get the type of clients that I want.
I’d like to try something else that lands me the kind of client that I’m looking for and obviously I don’t and haven’t experimented with many marketing techniques. So I think that I’m finally going to finally give this blogging thing a try. I’ve been curious about it for a while, what do I have to lose? I can also peck away at it during those down times (like now, when I’m waiting for the next version from a client…) Maybe I can learn something new along the way.
Can you let us know how your virtual blog tour goes (as in, if you end up with new cilents, readers, or whatever the goal is). I’m curious as to how effective new strategies are, although I’m sure it differs from person to person.
In my case the goal of the virtual blog tour is to bring more readers to this blog, promote my new indie publishing blog, and when appropriate to promote my social media blog. It’s going to be tough to say exactly how much traffic comes from the original articles since I’m trying to be an active commenter as well during the launch month. I can already see traffic coming from the KeyboardHussy blog to the new indie publishing site for example, a combination of the guest post and my comments in general on that blog where I include a link to the indie publishing blog.
One thing I’m already noticing overall is that links from Twitter followers are up — either links from the articles or RTs when I tweet about the guest posts. So that’s nice. I’m also seeing some fresh faces here in the comments already this month. I’m just not sure if it’s a case of previous lurkers suddenly finding something they want to comment on or new readers from the exposure on other sites.
Another goal of a blog tour is to build relevant links to your content. That can help your search engine rankings in the long haul — although you might not see results for a few months. Also, that content is archived and then indexed in search engines on the hosts’ sites too. That means those links are potentially long-term traffic sources, and highly targeted ones at that.
I’ve run shorter, but similar, tours in the past. They’ve generally proven to lead to short-term traffic surges and then a few long-term relationships with new regular readers or better relationships with the people who hosted the blog posts. And that networking aspect can lead to gigs when we keep each other in mind for referrals. For me that’s not a priority goal, and I probably wouldn’t recommend a blog tour for that specific reason, but it can happen. If you wanted to use a blog tour for direct gigs I would suggest handling the bio more like you would in article marketing — include a direct call to action and include only a single link that directs people to your business site. Once you get them to your landing page your copy there can convert them into buyers.