New Clients Now! Marketing Strategies for Freelance Success

A Plan of Action

In this chapter, we've talked about getting out there and doing some serious marketing to get your business up and running. If you don't do any marketing, you won't be in business long. If you implement poor marketing, you may be in business for less time. If you effectively market on a regular basis, you'll build the foundations of a successful business.

Develop a plan of action to get yourself in the game. There's an example Marketing Plan, which should give you a good starting point, on the CD-ROM in this kit.

But what marketing methods will work best? As I've said throughout this chapter, there's no simple answer to that question. I hope you've seen the many different issues that impact on the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. It's important to identify the best way for you to implement your marketing strategy. What works for one won't necessarily work for another. If you market yourself well, you should expect that:

• Qualified prospects will respond to the marketing you do. The best business comes from people who call you -- these people are motivated and keen to go. These are the prospects you want!
• You'll be able to convert more prospects into paying clients.
• You'll generate referrals -- an excellent way to land more business.

Over the years, my marketing plans have shifted from being long, boring documents to quick summaries of just a page or two. Instead of writing pages and pages regarding each newspaper's demographic and geographic reach, and how it's relevant to whatever campaign we're planning, I'm likely to scribble down: "Classifieds, $100 worth on Saturdays for ten weeks in Daily Planet. Contact Clark Kent, Ph. 555-5555."

Do what works in your case, not what the so-called experts do. That approach works for me only because I know the local newspapers and their readership, and, through experience, I have a general idea of the impact of those advertisements. A two-page summary might not work for the next person, who might need a plan that contains a little more documentation and review. Whatever the size of your plan, there are a few essential points that you'll need to include.

An Objective

The first thing your plan needs is a goal. Make it simple, and make it achievable. For example, your goal might be as simple as to sign up four clients within two months. It might be to generate sales of $10,000 within a month. Or even to have ten prospect meetings within two weeks.

Make the goal as specific as possible -- no airy-fairy language like "My goal is to implement an appropriate range of actions to assist clients in developing effective web-based strategies." Not only are all of those five-dollar words hard to spell, but they're too ambiguous. You need something simple, easy, and measurable.

Market Information

Okay, you've set a simple goal -- now, take a look at your market. Using the example from before, you may have defined your market to be small businesses within a 50-mile radius, participating in high-tech industries.

As we discussed earlier in the section called "Defining your Market", perhaps you've also completed a survey to find out exactly how these companies choose web developers. Maybe you also asked about their level of interest in web development and what factors influence the decisions they make -- you might find, for example, that they're all members of the local chamber of commerce.

To fully profile your market, you might also like to know:

• the size of the market
• market segments
• who the competition is
• the competitors' strengths and weaknesses
• your target market
• their buying patterns: many businesses are seasonal

Once you have this information, you'll be better armed to attack that market for best results. When you start business you want as many clients as you can get as quickly as you can.

Competitor Information

Complete a competitor analysis using the research techniques we discussed in Chapter 2, Business Planning, Research, and Competition. For each competitor, make sure you know who, what, when, where, how, and why. See how they advertise. Review their client list. Benchmark against them. Now, plan to beat them!

Your Marketing Strategy

Take a look at the marketing options available to you, and leverage what you know about:

• your target market
• how your market finds out about web development firms
• how your competitors advertise
• each marketing option

Competitor information is relevant to your marketing strategy in a number of ways. First, when you review a competitor's strategy, you need to ascertain whether simply copying their approach will be enough. It works for them, so it should work for you, right? Well, it sounds reasonable enough, but in practice things can be a little different. Established businesses have established names. There's an element of trust associated with their longevity in the industry -- I don't think I have ever seen an industry from which so many people have dropped out! -- and that equates to sales, often via referrals. As we know, referrals are often the best way to generate new business.

If you do exactly what the competition is doing, as the new kid on the block, you'll almost certainly fail. You need to identify successful strategies that you can apply to your business, and apply them with a twist, a point of difference. You need to be different so that you stand out and become noticed. If your competitor generates business through direct mail, then perhaps a direct mail campaign that incorporates a competition might work better for you. As long as you can develop your own unique angle, your campaign's potential for success will soar. If you're noticed, you're known. That's half the battle of attracting clients.

The information you've gathered on your competitors might also help you decide to adopt a strategy of competitive opposition. This can be highly effective in helping you move from a saturated and cluttered market to one where you may well be the only industry voice. Let's say your competitor has a strong presence in the local newspaper. By the sheer volume of ad space they've bought, and the length of their association with the paper, the competitor may have that particular market segment covered. Your small advertisements may not be able to make a big impact.

However, if you know that this advertising works for the competitor, it may be time to commence an advertising campaign in competing magazines and journals. You have the advantage of knowing that print advertising works for your competitor, along with the added benefit of having a good chance at winning a decent slice of an uncluttered parallel market.

Take what you can learn from your competitor, tweak it, and apply it to your own marketing to suit yourself. Importantly, you need to make it different so that you, and your business, stand out.

Your Marketing Message

What message will you communicate through your marketing efforts? This is a key consideration -- the quality and clarity of your message can mean the difference between an excellent response and an ordinary one.

When you're promoting your business you have to grab people's attention. Be outrageous. Be provocative. Be shocking! After all, you have to be the highest profile web developer or programmer or graphic artist in your region.

The old advertising formula for communication is Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA). Each represents a stage that your prospects must move through before they will buy from you:

• attention - Your message must grab the attention of your market.
• interest - The prospect has to become interested in what you have to say.
• desire - Your message must spark within the prospect a desire to obtain the benefits you offer.
• action - Ideally, your message will prompt the user to take action towards procuring your services.

The important point here is that nothing's going to happen as a result of your marketing unless you grab people's attention. Do whatever it takes. This is why I did the radio show, why I do the public speeches and why I advertise -- all of those tricks gain the attention of the target market.

Tell prospects their problem, then offer the solution. Once you have the prospects' attention, you should restate their problem -- a good way to express that problem is they don't make enough money through their current business channels. Next, you offer them a solution to that problem -- that's your pitch. Finally, you ask them to take action -- ask them to contact you.

Being outrageous attracts attention, and it's attention that you're after. A by-product of being outrageous is that you'll often be entertaining as well -- and a lot of clients like to be entertained. They want a good job, a real solution, and professionalism, but make your prospects enjoy themselves -- cause them to laugh -- and you're off to a great start!

Measurement

Okay, so now we have a good picture of advertising, promotion, and PR for the freelance web designer.

The point here is that you need to implement many different marketing techniques on an ongoing basis. Running seasonal campaigns is good, but continual promotion via a number of means is far more effective. Only then will you generate a healthy number of prospects for your business.

This brings us to an important point: the whole idea behind marketing is to generate interest among your target audience. More than that, the purpose of marketing is to generate leads -- leads that will evolve into sales. In order to ensure that you use your marketing budget to your best advantage, you must do one thing: measure the cost of every response.

Measure the response to every marketing technique you implement. It's a simple process to analyze the benefits per dollar of everything you do -- and it's even easier if you use the Marketing Budget in the Budget file and the Marketing Activities Analysis Sheet included on this kit's CD-ROM.

Look closely at the dollar benefits and tweak your marketing tactics accordingly. For example, let's say your $40-per-week classified advertising campaign generates two $3,000 web site sales within a couple of months. You've spent around $200, and generated $6,000 in income. Sounds great, doesn't it? But don't forget the other, hidden costs of the advertisement. The cost breakdown may look something like this:

• time spent writing the ad: one hour
• unproductive leads generated: 14
• time spent following unproductive leads: ten hours
• time spent on winning proposals: eight hours
• traveling time: four hours
• overhead costs: postage, letterheads, envelopes, telephone calls, and the like

Assuming you generate a healthy 30% profit on the jobs themselves -- that's $1,800 -- you need to deduct wages for 23 hours of extra work (a minimum of $690). Also deduct $200 for the advertisement itself, and maybe another $100 for overheads such as postage and petrol. That reduces your $1,800 profit to a return of just $810 for your original investment of $200. This is a fairly simple example, but keep in mind that the benefits you receive from many strategies may not be so easily quantified.

Whether you follow any of these advertising, promotion, and PR suggestions is up to you. Just do it! Think big; isn't it time for you to be attracting those clients that everyone else seems to reach?

Key Points

• Make a plan! Identify your objective, and how you'll reach it.
• Consider the market and your competition.
• List the tools you'll use to market your business, and the message you'll promote.
• Measure the results of everything you do.

Summary

We kicked off this chapter on the theme that doing something was better than hypothesizing about what you could do. This is definitely the case when it comes to marketing. If you have an idea that a particular tool or approach might work, try it, test the results, and adjust your future activities accordingly. Don't procrastinate! Get out there and do it!

We qualified this approach of mine with some key marketing theory, beginning with a discussion of how to target your marketing efforts. We talked about defining and reaching particular target audience segments, and how you can attract prequalified leads through targeted marketing.

Next, we discussed in detail your marketing options. First, we addressed the issue of assessment, so that you could identify which marketing tactics and tools might be valuable for you. Then, we launched into a review of the more popular and affordable marketing options available to the budding freelancer or small business owner, and I provided a PR primer for your use in attracting media attention to your work.

Lastly, we looked at developing a marketing plan that contained achievable goals, a market and competitor analysis, a detailed strategy, the marketing message, and addressed the all-important aspect of measurement, without which your marketing efforts would lack direction.

Let's continue to discuss the ways you can work to establish your freelance or small web design business. In the next chapter, we'll cover the development of a strong competitive advantage, or unique selling proposition, which will help you distance yourself from the competition and really stand out from the crowd. In the meantime, download this chapter and three others from The Web Design Business Kit 2.0, and check out the full table of contents for more information on what the kit covers.