Just as in any business, once you establish a reputation for good work, the word starts to get around, and marketing your services starts to become less of a chore. Word-of-mouth advertising is the best kind, and there are things that you can do proactively to encourage this to happen for your freelance business. That is what this section is all about.

Setting up a Freelance Marketing Plan

As a freelancer, you could simply hit the job boards, bid on gigs, and see what happens. If freelancing is just a part time endeavor for you, this may be perfectly acceptable and provide you with sufficient work for your needs.

If, however, you intend to make freelancing your life’s work and principle source of income, you need a well thought out plan that outlines your goals and objectives and provides a road map to steer you to success. In other words, you need to think of your freelancing as a business.

Step 1: Conduct a Self-introspection

Before you know what you can offer, you need to know what you have. Conduct a self-assessment of your skills, likes, preferences, and review your resume for the kind of experience you have, and the industries in which you have worked. What is your educational background and what specialized training have you had? What kinds of skills and aptitude will set you apart? See the Conduct a Self Assessment article for additional guidance.

From this, you can develop a capabilities statement, which is a list of your skills categorized into service areas that you can market to clients. At this time, you should also list the resources you can draw on: your computer system and peripheral equipment — like printers, scanners, plotters — and the software you’re proficient at and have installed, ready to be utilized. Depending upon your occupation, you could have anything from an embroidery machine to a massage table listed here. You may have subscriptions to specialized services, like LexisNexis or proprietary real estate databases. These should also be accounted for. The intent here is to have everything that you could possibly offer listed in one place so that when you go to produce your marketing brochure or web site, you won’t leave anything out.

Step 2: Analyze your Market

Once you determine what you’d like to offer, you need to make sure that there is a market for it. After all, if you program in COBOL, and the market has now moved on to object oriented and web-based computer languages, there is little likelihood of success, unless your strategy is to broaden your geography and position yourself as an expert that is part of a rare dying breed of specialists. You also have to consider your competition and whether the market is already saturated with people who do what you do. Try to determine if there are segments that are being under served or poorly served by the competition, and if you have an angle you can use to your advantage.

From the knowledge gained from this market analysis, you should be able to determine your pricing strategy based on what the market will bear and your competition.

Step 3: Profile your Potential Customer

Who, in your mind, would be your perfect customer? What services would they require that you can fulfill? What problems are they experiencing that you can provide solutions for? What motivators prompt them to buy your kind of service? Where are these customers likely to be located? How do they typically contract for services such as yours?

Always remember that people buy what they want, not what they need. An understanding of buyer behavior will help you to market to your prospects effectively.

Step 4: Pick a Specialty Niche

As the saying goes: “You’re better off being a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.” Conventional wisdom says to carve out a niche that you have real potential to dominate. You can better focus your efforts and efficiently utilize your resources that way. The other tenet here is that the niche needs to be easy to communicate with. If you have a niche that is hard to reach, your effectiveness will be diminished and it may prove expensive to service them.

Step 5: Develop your Unique Selling Proposition

In developing your marketing message, you first have to determine what sets you apart from others that do what you do. Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) statement tells customers what differentiates you from the other choices they may have, and why it’s important to choose you above all others. It may be your unconditional guarantee or a broader range of services under one roof, or one hour response time. Most importantly, whatever it is that you say sets you apart, make sure that it’s true.

Once you have your USP in place, then you can go on and set your marketing message, which not only tells prospects who you are, but how you understand their problem, the benefits that will be derived from using your solution, and why the issue should be addressed without delay.

Step 6: Develop a Marketing Strategy

A strategy is a premeditated plan of action designed to accomplish a certain goal. In marketing terms, that goal is to make sales and perhaps dominate a market. In your freelancing business, a marketing strategy may be to provide free email support for questions that arise after the project completes, or to wow the customer with service. A good strategy is often to leverage whatever unique abilities you have and charge the customer more for the advantage. Conversely, a penetrating strategy might be to undercut the competition on price, sacrificing short term profits, and then raise prices gradually as market share is gained.

Step 7: Determine Your Marketing Medium

What methods will you use to advertise your freelancing services? You will need to carefully consider the cost vs. effectiveness of using various forms of promotion. List your services on Elance, Guru, or iFreelance? Attend Chamber of Commerce networking events? Set up an email campaign? Write a blog? Your choices are many, and will largely depend upon what medium is customary for your industry and your budget.

Whatever you decide to do, create a marketing calendar and keep to it consistently. Scheduling marketing activities that take place weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, and quarterly will help you to avoid the feast or famine syndrome that most independent professionals fall prey to. And, by doing so, marketing will become easier since it becomes a regular part of your business life.

The idea is to deliver your marketing message to the most niche prospects at the lowest possible cost.

Step 8: Set Your Target Income Goal

How much do you need to make to cover all your business and living expenses with a little left over? This should be your minimum, absolutely must reach goal. “A little left over” proves whether your endeavor has potential and is worth undertaking to begin with. “Breaking even” is not an option, you MUST be able to make a profit.

Goals, it is said, are just wishes until they are written down. It is important that you write your goals down and refer to them often. In determining your goals, use the S.M.A.R.T acronym. Goals need to be:

• Specific - a goal has a greater chance of being accomplished if it is stated clearly and specifically. For example, “I intend to produce $50,000 in income in calendar year 2008.”
• Measurable - Find a way to measure your progress using hard numbers. Set target dates. For example, produce monthly or quarterly reports using Quicken or QuickBooks.
• Achievable - By breaking goals down into reachable chunks or benchmarks, you increase the attainability of the goal and make it seem less overwhelming.
• Realistic - To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work, and you believe it can be accomplished.
• Time-specific - By setting a timeframe, you create a sense of urgency, which is important in motivating you to accomplish the goal.

Step 9: Develop a Budget

Again, we remind you that you’re going through this exercise because you want to recognize your freelancing as a business. Every successful business has an operating budget that covers its day to day expenses. Marketing and promotion are also necessary expenditures that need to be figured into the mix. It’s tempting to take shortcuts here because if times are lean, it’s easy to just cut back on advertising to save money. Don’t do it! Try to set aside a specific amount of money each month to be used to promote your freelance business. Remember, what you’re trying to accomplish here is to get new business to flow to you naturally instead of having to knock on doors each time an assignment ends.

Step 10: Put Your Plan on Paper

Once you have completed the nine steps above, start to put the results of your research and analysis on paper. In each area, explain your reasoning why you are choosing to do things a certain way, and if you can, cite references to back up your analysis. Down the road, you may need to justify your thinking (to obtain financing, for instance), so it will be good to document these things now while the rationale is still fresh in you mind. It will also help guide you in making decisions and implementing your strategy.

You can be as detailed or broad stroked in your marketing plan as you wish, but remember that it is always a work in progress. Don’t just file it away. Keep it visible and incorporate it into your vision for your business. Make adjustments as market conditions change and keep it up to date by adding observations as you go along.

Related Articles

• Getting the Freelance Gigs to Come to You - Other Smart Strategies
• Getting the Freelance Gigs to Come to You - Your Resume and Portfolio
• Going Out and Getting the Gigs - Using Outside Sources
• Going out and Getting the Gigs - Using Your Contacts