You’ve honed your skills and decided to make the leap into freelancing. But how do you find clients and start making money?
Our Fall Freelancing Tool Kit Series launched on Sept 25th with Creating Your Marketing Plan. Presenter Melissa Hennessy shared marketing essentials for freelancers. Here are a few highlights:
– Research comes first. Identify your clients and their needs/goals first. Then check out your competition. Before you understand the landscape you will have trouble setting rates and building contacts.
– Brand yourself. Resume, website, portfolio and business cards are also necessary tools. Uniform design and message across all of these elements will help build your credibility.
– Online marketing. Social media, portfolio websites (Behance, Coroflot, etc), and blogs are all tools for building and maintaining relationships.
– Promo items. Create a budget so you know up front what you can afford to spend. Mailers and promotional items can be expensive, but for some emerging professionals they can be a great way to get noticed.
– Networking. Get off the couch and away from the computer! Networking is effective and typically free or low cost.
In your first years of freelancing, marketing can take up to 50% of your time. It’s tempting to abandon your efforts when work is coming in steadily, but by staying organized and setting marketing goals, you can ensure that you stay busy year round!
Join us for future Freelancing Tool Kit sessions:
10/2 @ 6:30 Cover Your Assets: Income Taxes for Freelancers
10/15 @ 6:30 Tech Tools for Freelancers
11/12 @ 6:30 Copyrighting Your Work
Or review our freelancing resource page, with recommended links and videos.
