8 Genius Ways To Market Yourself As A Freelance Writer: Organically Find High-Paying Clients
For this article in the Monastic Series on freelance writing, I wanted to discuss how to market yourself as a freelance writer online. It’s an often overlooked practice that is ironic, given that most writers work to market something else.
To market yourself as a freelance writer is a necessary business function as is to write client articles. One can’t live without the other — how would you find whom to write for if no marketing was done for your business?
Here’s how to organically find clients and market yourself as a freelance writer.
Key Points To Market Yourself As A Freelance Writer
- Freelancers should consider themselves a business
- Inbound marketing takes more effort but infinitely more scalable than outbound marketing
- Finding your target market is the most important step. Don’t rush it.
Why You Should Market Yourself: The “Why”
Volatility is the bane of many freelancers’ careers.
That’s because you might be thinking of freelancing the wrong way. If you’re “freelancing” for one client, then, of course, you’ll experience periodic droughts. That comes with the business.
As a one-client business, you’re essentially a glorified employee without benefits.
Freelancers should consider themselves a business, which may also experience periods of down revenue though mitigated by their sheer number of clients.
Now, as a business, ask yourself: why should you expend your limited resources on marketing?
Because clients can come and go as they please, so it’s your responsibility to ensure that people keep coming through the door.
Marketing is how you turn the lights on in your office. No company has ever survived without some form of marketing for its product. If you want your freelance writing business to thrive and grow, write.
Your Target Audience: The “Who”
I talked about finding your niche as a freelance writer in another article — finding your target audience is one of those steps.
This step is essential to carve out a piece of the overall market.
Your target market will fall under one of these two categories::
- Mass (Undifferentiated) Marketing
- Targeted (Differentiated Marketing)
As a freelance writing business, you’ll likely have to take on a targeted marketing approach to carve out a larger market share. This means your marketing efforts should be targetted to a specific buyer persona.
Under differentiated marketing, you could focus on working with multisegment marketing or specialize on a concentrated market. Niche markets, microtargeting, and one-to-one marketing are very popular techniques under this marketing approach.
Finding your target market is a matter of identifying the following:
- Company Strengths
- Market Growth Potential
- Market Accessibility
- Company Resources
- Product-Market Fit
Once you’ve identified your market and target audience, you can move on to the next section.
Where You Should Be Promoting Yourself: The “Where”
There’s only one answer to where you should promote yourself: wherever your target market is.
More specifically, you can reach them through the following channels:
- Google SEO
- Social Media
- Online Directories
- Offline/Local Community
- Email Marketing
How You Promote Yourself: The “How”
Now, this is the real meat of the article.
You can promote your freelance writing through Inbound or outbound marketing. Here’s a little more on both topics:
Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing for freelance writing is the process of marketing where a company initiates the conversation and actively sends out messages to find clients. While you may receive more responses than inbound marketing, this process is very limiting — your success in finding clients is directly tied to the number of proposals and emails you send out.
Here’s how you can practice outbound marketing:
Cold Emailing: Cold emailing is when you send out a pitch to a company that you don’t personally know. You could use Google and LinkedIn to find contact information and a third-party email program to automate follow-ups.
Advertising: This marketing tactic involves using paid ads to market to clients. You could use digital formats like PPC on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn or buy physical advertisements on print media. The latter’s benefit is that you might find old-school clients interested in building a digital presence but have no idea where to start.
Job Applications: Like cold pitching, you could leverage professional networks and online marketplaces to find and apply for jobs. These include LinkedIn, UpWork, ProBlogger, and Fiverr. Unfortunately, you’ll probably find low-paying, demanding clients through this process.
Word of Mouth: Get out there and talk to people. Tap into your professional network to find startups and new businesses that might need digital marketing work.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing for freelance writing is the idea that your clients should organically reach you. This marketing strategy takes longer to mature and succeed, some strategies won’t give you results until you’ve worked on them for at least six months to a year! Once you succeed in these strategies, however, they become very easy to maintain and incredibly scalable.
Google SEO: Google SEO is a potent tool that I think everyone who can should use. If you could build a large website that has a large amount of incoming, organic traffic, not only do you attract potential clients, but you could also gain another income source (Google Ads)
Webinars: If you can build authority by joining conferences and being a guest speaker, why not? This is a great way to show off your authority, build a network, and get paid.
Social media: The logic between this and Google SEO is the same, except social media tacks on the extra responsibility of filming and video editing. Maybe that’s an extra side hustle?
Referrals: This is the most powerful tool you could have as a freelance writer. Because we’re in a very personal and authority-driven space, referrals drive a lot of freelance marketers businesses. Do good work, ask if you’re client or friend knows people, and get more clients.
This story was originally published on my blog: monasticspaces.com. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter for more stories and insights on building a better life.
