How To Market Yourself As A Freelancer

The freelance business is just like any other business, It demands a lot of time and commitment to be successful. If you plan to have a thriving career as a freelancer, then there are some things you have to do. First, you have to learn?how to market yourself.

Marketing may sound daunting as it can demand a lot of time and can be very costly at times. This will leave you wondering, how can I afford to promote my business? Well, not to worry, this article will outline some of the most inexpensive & essential ways to market your freelance business.

1. Start with a?website

When it comes to knowing how to market yourself online, having a website is the fundamental step. A simple website with 4 pages (Home, About, Work, Contact) is all you need. State what you do clearly, then back it up with great examples. Make sure the site is responsive, and avoid any fluff, ambiguity and anything that confuses the user to navigate your site. This includes cinemagraphs, large images, parallax effects, heavy animations or an unintuitive UI. Use a legible and neutral typeface. Limit the number of colours you use. Have a simple logo. If you don’t have one, just typeset your name in any font you like. Make your site SEO friendly. Name the images on your site with descriptive names. “Untitled” or “Final_02” doesn’t count as being descriptive. Instead, try “London-Motion-Design-Anime-Expo”. Essentially, this helps Google to classify the images so that you can be easily found.

2. Update your social?profiles

Get a professionally shot photo up. It’s worth the investment since you’ll be able to use this across all platforms, which also helps with brand consistency. Ask yourself, would I dive deeper into this person’s profile? Do I appear professional, credible, and approachable? Write a captivating headline instead of a job title. Focus on a user/customer benefit vs describing what you do. What do you do for them? An example could be “I help Michelin star restaurants create scroll-stopping ads”

Update your education, work history, awards and accolades. Request a few, well-written, but sincere testimonials.

3. What to post on social?media?

What to post on social media is not that complicated, start with your work. Make a habit of creating something and posting it on social media to show your skills and show what you are capable of, then the next step is to teach what you learn — share everything that you are learning, everyday struggles & even your life as a freelancer. Start by sharing this daily,?you will get your first 1000 followers and 2 to 3 average paying inbound clients in a matter of time.

After 1000 followers you need to focus on who you want to serve with your content. Who is this content for? Who is your ideal client? Once you’ve unpacked those answers, claim you are the expert in your respective niche and maintain your status by posting daily, with the intention of helping your audience and therefore your future clients.

Take Clients Behind-The-Scenes

Let’s say you’re working as a freelance camera operator and video editor. In addition to your portfolio on your website, include a few videos that show off the hard work, sweat (maybe not the tears part), and dedication that goes into each piece. You could do a short time-lapse video, showing you ingesting and organising all of your footage, cutting it into a timeline and then showing the final video.

BTS videos are the perfect medium to convey the value that you can bring to clients in a short time. This is a simple yet powerful way to show your talents, and take your prospects behind the scene to get to know you, your work and your process on a more personal level.

4. It’s old-fashioned, but have a business?card

Keep it simple and tasteful. Make sure you say what you do and that your contact info is legible. Other than that, avoid using additional photography, or illustration of artwork on your card. It’s a name card and not a billboard. Keep it simple. You can use your business card when you go to networking events or when you meet someone new (Just avoid any business-card-envy like Christian Bale had in American Psycho).

5. Join communities and organizations

Be active in both social groups (Facebook and LinkedIn) and trade organizations. Chances are, there’s a professional organization within a few miles of where you have located Build relationships with people without trying to sell. Find out more about who they are, their goals, and their challenges.

6. Ask for referrals

Don’t be afraid to ask for work.?You should always ask your friends, family, colleagues, and former clients for referrals. If you don’t ask, they may assume you’re too busy for more work and won’t share your information.

Remember: asking for referrals is not bugging anyone. It’s not begging for work. It’s letting the people who already love your work, help the people they know have a chance to experience the amazing service that you provide.

7. Highlight past client?reviews

As artists, we just want to focus on the art and want to remain humble in the process. So if you’re like most creatives and you’re not a fan of singing your own praises, don’t. Let your happy current and former clients sing them for you. All you have to do is make it easy for them to tell your potential clients how amazing working with you is and how happy they are with the results that you’ve provided.

You can do this by sending an email asking how they felt about working with you and how they feel about the results you got. When they write back with lots of praise, you can then go “Wow, that’s so kind of you to say. May I use that as a review on my website/portfolio?” and that’s it — that’s how easy it is to get testimonials from your clients. We have a dedicated lesson on how to get successful testimonials and reviews in our course Freelance Mastery?here.

8. Pitch your?services

Oh, you didn’t really think I’d somehow forget that you need to be pitching on a consistent basis, did you? Consistently pitching is one of the most effective ways to grow your freelance business. If you’d like more projects than you can handle to choose from, you need to be pitching. If you’re not sure how to pitch in a way that gets responses and clients, you can check out?The Freelance Mastery course ?we put together just for you. The essence of pitching is, that you manually find relevant ‘leads’ online that you can help, you reach out to them and book in a meeting and close them on call.

Terms like pitching, marketing and closing may sound too salesy, and it did to me too until I realised these were some of the essential ingredients to getting consistent work coming in.

Businesses who don’t know you exist can’t hire you. If you don’t market to them, you are inadvertently encouraging them to hire someone else, possibly someone who won’t be as good as a fit as you are.

By marketing your business to the appropriate audience, you’re putting your freelance bat-signal in the air, showing that you exist and you have the ability and desire to solve their company’s needs with your video talents. There’s no pressure, no sleazy sales pitches to people that don’t need you, just your friendly neighbourhood freelancer offering a hand to those that need it. (Did I really just mix a Marvel and DC metaphor in there?).

Final thoughts

1. Build your website
2. Update your social profiles & create content daily.
3. Have a simple business card.
4. Join communities and organizations.
5. Ask for referrals.
6. Highlight past client reviews.
7. Pitch your services

Access Freelance Mastery ???www.nkcourses.co.uk