Freelancer’s lifestyle, despite the appearances, isn’t a piece of cake. Without the full-time job payment, their monthly survival depends on the amount and quality of customers they are able to attract. Their market presence should be flawless in both online and offline channels.
When it comes to offline freelancers should take a course at meetings and networking. They should attend events and showcase their work in all places a potential client can spot them. Also, I must emphasize the importance of references and word of mouth marketing. Freelancers rely on their customers. If they keep them happy and don’t forget to ask for references it should do the work. This tactic generates warm leads and thus saves the time spent on looking for new contracts.
Internet is also a sea full of fishes. Freelancer should use it as a giant, global market. The full range of possibilities can be narrowed to a few points on which they should focus at the beginning:
- Social media outreach, regular updates, and interaction
- Blog with valuable expert-level content
- Referrals (there’s no difference between online and offline at this point)
- Community participation – Facebook groups, Forums
- Keeping a website with:
- References
- Portfolio pieces
- Rates
- Contact details
- Using online job boards
- Giving professional talks at meetups, recording them and posting on social websites.
The best kinds of marketing for Freelancers are:
- Establishing own brand and working on brand awareness
- Content marketing – to prove their expert position
- Using social media:
- Groups to find job opportunities
- LinkedIn profile and Facebook fanpage to showcase works
- building network
- asking for references
- Email marketing to keep in touch with former clients, ask them for references and inform about new works
Is Marketing Automation Necessary for Freelancers?
Even though Freelancers aren’t the entrepreneurs per se, they can still benefit from marketing automation tools. They can use it to generate more leads from both website and social media profile. Whit this organical database they can start running efficient email nurturing campaigns to warm up acquired leads. Also, to look more professional they should focus on making the impression of one-to-one communication even while sending bulk emails. This is possible only with the highest level of personalization available via marketing automation platforms, such as SALESmanago.
Another perk of implementing the tracking code on the website is that you can start to use its potential to the fullest. As long as you have a website, you can use it to gather behavioral data from your visitors. It helps you spot the “milky cows”, evergreens and the stuff you should no longer pay attention to. It will save you a lot of time and money because you can focus on advertising and highlighting only those works of yours that will pay off.
So the real question is: Can Freelancers afford not using marketing automation?
Let me know what do you think about this new cycle. If you have any suggestions for questions I should answer in particular let me know at maja.kowalska@salesmanago.com!
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