Marketing Your Freelance Business

One of my first marketing experiments after opening up my agency’s office in downtown Norfolk, Virginia was to setup a Facebook ad campaign advertising our web design and development services.

Fast forward a few hundred dollars in budget… and you can probably guess what happened next.

I shut down the campaigns.

The clicks we did get (which weren’t many) weren’t leading to new leads. It was a waste of money.

I wrote off the idea of paid advertising, and instead focused on building up a grassroots network of referral sources.

Well, my decision to steer clear of ads obviously worked. We were able to make do without paying for leads.

But a few months ago, somebody asked me if I’d reconsider paid advertising for finding clients after hearing about the runaway success I’ve had advertising my email course, Charge What You’re Worth.

My response was that if I could go back in time knowing what I know now about Facebook ads, I would. Here’s why:

In this article, I’m going to open up the kimono and give you an inside look at a conversation I had last week with someone in one of my Mastermind groups. These conversations are typically private, but I asked Jordan if he’d be open to me sharing the discussion we had with all of you, and he said yes. Here’s the plan we put together for helping his software business find, and ultimately sell, high-value clients.

Before you hit that back button, know that this article will help you — even if you aren’t an optimization consultant who works with ecommerce companies.

My goal is to help you take many of the strategies and techniques that Jordan is using and apply them to your own business – regardless of what type it is.

There are plenty of ways for freelancers to get project leads: job marketplaces like oDesk or Elance, referrals from past clients, people finding your website through a Google search, and so on.

But we all know these acquisition channels vary in quality. Given the choice, I think we’d all prefer a strong referral from a wonderful past client over competing with potentially hundreds of others for a gig on a job board.

So with that said, this article is about referrals — the holy grail of project leads. One of the best things you can do as the owner of your freelancing business is to increase the amount of referral sources you have. The more people you have to refer you, the more direct leads you’re able to get.

But most of us don’t do much to proactively get more referrals or to expand our referral network. We each have a “sphere of influence” — people who know what we provide, and are able to recommend us to others (or just hire us outright). Let’s talk about how you can both grow your sphere of influence, and condition those in it to become prime referral sources for you.

Back when I was jumpstarting my fledging agency, I used to attend a lot of events. Between what I could find on Meetup.com and the events hosted by the Chamber of Commerce and our local technology council, I spent at least a night a week chatting (and usually drinking) with local business owners.

Most nights I’d come home and the first thing my wife would ask was, “So… did you get any clients tonight?”

“Maybe,” I’d say as I deposited that night’s loot of business cards into my sock drawer. “These things take time.”

These events almost always yielded no fruit. I’d show up, make small talk, do my best to maintain eye contact, and would swap business cards with whoever I was talking to. And then I’d repeat the ritual again with whoever was next.

When I attended my first Chamber of Commerce meeting, I really felt like I was a fish out of water. I came in shorts… and a t-shirt. I didn’t have any business cards, nor did I have any idea what I was doing.

And everyone was in suits. Talk about embarassing!

But I eventually figured out how to “play the game” and make the most of these events. If you’ve never been to a networking mixer, or have but with little results to show, I’m going to outline how I’ve leveraged these events while growing my consultancy.