New Clients Now! Marketing Strategies for Freelance Success

Marketing your business isn't hard. There are literally hundreds of ways you might go about it. They are not all equally effective, but you'll soon have more clients if you follow a few basic steps to develop a marketing strategy that works, implement it regularly and measure its impact.

As we've seen, the bottom line is that you need a steady flow of prospects to develop your business. The adoption of an approach that uses many different but interlinked marketing strategies will have those prospects beating down your door before too long. In this chapter, we'll discuss these strategies in detail to uncover those that will work best for your business (but don't forget that you can download this and three other chapters if you'd like to hang onto this information to implement in your own business!).

Contrary to popular opinion, your advertising and promotion efforts need not be expensive. In fact, they should be very cheap and highly profitable. Rather than implement marketing strategies that run at a loss, you want to do what works. You need highly targeted, results-driven marketing to generate that lead, qualify the lead, find out how you can help, and then offer a solution. Bingo! Another sale on the way.

Do Something!

One of the biggest mistakes I see small businesspeople make is that they simply don't do any marketing. They have to finish off a certain job, they don't have the money to pay for an advertisement in the local paper, they don't have the expertise, they don't have the time -- their excuses go on and on. Yet marketing isn't difficult; in fact, it can be reduced to two basic actions:

1. Figure out who might want what you sell.


2. Ask those people to buy it.

There are many different ways to gain the attention of your market -- and that means many different ways to waste money! Therefore, it's crucial to be smart about your marketing. Measure the results and crunch the numbers to find out what works best to gain attention. If you can attract a steady stream of prospects to your door, your business will grow. How can you create that steady stream? Simple -- regular marketing means regular prospects. Regular direct mail, regular advertising, a regular newsletter, regular networking, regular offers to local businesses -- whatever you do, do it regularly, and you'll generate those prospects.

As prospects see your brand in more places, and hear about you from more of their business contacts, your name will begin to grow familiar to them. Once they're used to your name, they're only a small step away from feeling that they know and trust you -- and then they'll start calling.

Simply put yourself in the shoes of your potential clients. Ask yourself what might be the most effective way to attract their attention to your offer:

• Would it be best to cold call your prospects?
• Would it be best to write your prospects a letter to tell them of your services?
• Would it be best to present a seminar entitled, "Attracting more business using the Internet"?

Let's look at a real-life example:

Example 6.1. $20K in Thirty Days!
My company recently faced the challenge of generating an additional $20,000 of business within 12 weeks. Here's how we planned to achieve the goal:

• Send a special-offer letter to all our current clients, then follow up with a telephone call.
• Complete a direct mail campaign to 200 local businesses -- a three-piece mailer spread over three weeks.
• Run a five-week business newspaper advertising campaign.
• Launch a PR campaign, including media releases announcing that the company is the new developer for a major site, the promotion of a team member, the release of a survey we've commissioned, and a few other bits and pieces.
• Ask all of our current clients for referrals.
• Attend every networking opportunity.

What were the results of our campaign? The advertisement, which cost $70 per week for five weeks, secured us a $7,800 web site deal with a $300 monthly ongoing marketing fee. The PR campaign delivered another $5,000 worth of work with strong potential for more. A current client took up our offer of site management services priced at $110 per month, and asked us to implement her online marketing campaign, which meant another $5,000 per year. The mailout to local businesses generated three qualified leads to follow up. A quick calculation reveals that we achieved our goal of $20,000 in additional income in just a few weeks.

The key point is that nothing will be accomplished by your sitting around waiting for people to realize the existence of your business. You might be a hot designer, but people need to know about your services before you can make anything of your talents.

Why your Marketing Should Be Very, Very Cheap

The whole aim of marketing is to generate interest. What's the best measure of "interest?" Leads and sales.

Marketing your business shouldn't just be inexpensive -- it should be profitable. It should be profitable because it works. It should work because it is highly targeted and effective. Simple! Targeted marketing ensures return on investment: the return you generate from your marketing efforts should far outweigh their cost.

Your marketing success stems from finding people who aren't your clients, but should be. The people who should be your clients won't differ much from those who are the current clients of your competitors -- in other words, those clients have all the characteristics of the clients who would buy your services. The discovery of these characteristics is the first step toward defining your target market.

Defining your Market

In identifying the characteristics of your target market, so that we can select which marketing tools will be the most effective in reaching it, we can assume two tried-and-tested characteristics to be very likely:

• Prospects with the greatest potential to become your clients will generally live within a 50-mile radius of your business.
• Prospects with the greatest potential to become your clients will operate a business, probably a small business.

Now that we've found a common thread among your potential clients, the next step is to find out how these prospects might hear about web development businesses that offer the services they need. Keep in mind that the current clients of your competitors have all the characteristics of the people who would buy your services. What characteristic -- in addition to the two we just discussed -- identifies the current clients of your opposition? They all have web sites.

It's time for action! It's this simple: call the businesses in your area who have web sites, tell them you're surveying the ways people hear of web development firms, and ask how they first heard of the firm they use. Don't try to develop the relationship any further than that -- you're just completing research at this stage. The people you call will usually be happy to help, and before you know it, you'll have a fantastic idea of what tools you should use to market your business to the right audience!

You'll also gain the names and addresses of about 100 businesses who have web sites and who now have a relationship with you. Mail them all a thank-you letter for participating in your survey, along with a summary of the survey results. Keep in touch, making some marketing contact with them every three months. Soon, a few of these prospects will inevitably start to trickle over to your business.

Research Hint!
To improve the way our survey call is received, we make the results of every survey we complete available to our local media, and, on occasion, national media. That way, when we call businesses that might belong within our market, we can say: "We're currently completing a survey that will be made available to XYZ Television Station. The survey question is: how did you first hear of the web design firm that developed your web site?"

This approach lends you instant credibility, and increases your response rate. If the people on the other end of the telephone know that the survey will be made available to the local TV station, they'll search high and low to find you the answer!

Narrowing the Field

These simple steps provide you with an excellent basis from which to launch your marketing. However, you'll find even more valuable information if you focus a little more deeply.

For instance, by looking at which businesses have web sites, and which don't, you'll find that there are more web sites in certain industries than in others. For example, let's assume that high-tech industries have a higher percentage of businesses with web sites than do any other industry segments. This solid assumption now narrows your target market to include small business operators who:

• manage high-tech businesses
• are within a 50-mile radius of your business

From the survey you've conducted, you know how most of the businesses in your area hear of web sites designers. That's a well-targeted market! Now you can grab your market's attention with laser-like precision. Moreover, because your marketing is so well targeted, it should be very successful.

The bottom line is that it makes no sense to spend $5,000 on newspaper advertisements and hope for the best. Conversely, with just two hours' work, you can find out exactly how your particular market hears of offerings in your line of business and target your promotions far more cheaply and accurately. Here's an example of how easily one business could have put what we've just discussed into practice:

Example 6.2. Mmm ... Coffee and Cake
My business is perfectly situated, it being directly above a bakery, a cafe, and a pizzeria! These business are all doing an excellent trade -- apart from the cafe. That's changed hands three times in the past 12 months, simply because the operators don't target their market.

The market for the cafe would be people located within a five-mile radius. An even better market would be people within a 100-meter radius. The absolute best market would be people who work in offices within about 50 meters of the cafe, which is open largely during business hours.

At any point in time, my business might have 12 people working away. Almost all of us like to eat out for lunch, or at least step out to buy our lunch to bring back to the office -- and then there's the coffee runs. Yet, in the 12 months we've been in those offices, we have never had the cafe staff knock on our door and say, "Hey, you guys! Come and eat lunch with us! We make killer kebabs, sensational sandwiches, and perfect pies, and we'll treat you like the valued neighbours you are! Here's a voucher for a special deal to try us out this week -- come on down!"

You're in business, and you want to sell whatever it is you sell. Tell people about what you sell. Ask them to buy.

The owners of that cafe should be dropping their new menu in to us every week. They should be wandering around the nearby offices, introducing themselves. They should letterbox-drop flyers galore. They should have fabulous big signage outside their premises. And they should do whatever they can to tell people that they're in business, and that they have something to sell.

Only then will their cafe be a successful one.