By now you probably know that the top way to land new clients is to send value-packed pitches. But, sending pitch after pitch (don’t forget follow-ups, too!) can start to feel dull, if that’s all you do. As effective as pitch emails are, there are other freelance marketing strategies that can bump up your lead generation (and help give you some variety in your marketing tactics).
Of course, you always have the options of:
- Joining Facebook groups and engaging with other members while mentioning your freelance business
- Telling friends, family, and former colleagues about your freelance services.
And we highly recommend you do both of those things. However, we’re going to take it a few steps further today, and dive into some other tips to enhance your digital freelance marketing.
1. Write a Guest Post for a Blog
There are roughly a million-bazillion blogs out there (that’s the official number). Many of these blogs are written by business coaches and marketers. So, you could offer up the idea of writing a guest post featuring tips that would benefit their audience. This is a perfect way to display your expertise and spread the word about your freelance business.
So, if you’re a designer it may be why having a cohesive set of brand guidelines is so important (and, specifically, why it’s so important for that blog’s audience). Or, if you’re a Pinterest ads manager, three tips to get started with Pinterest advertising (with a CTA to contact you if they want to avoid the DIY and have it handled by a pro). Or, if you’re a developer, why site speed is so important and a top tip to improve it.
You get the idea! You should look to blog posts already out there on a given topic and see how you can set your blog post apart from the rest. What advice do you have that no one else is sharing? What unique take or angle do you have on a topic?
2. Be a Podcast Guest
Remember how there are about a million-bazillion blogs out there? Well, there’s a million-bazillion and one podcasts, and a large chunk of them are geared towards your target audience: business owners who are dedicated to growing their business.
Speaking as a guest on a podcast related to your field will introduce you to so many potential clients and it will show the expertise you have.
Bonus points: before you go on a podcast, create a freebie that listeners can download from your site. You’ll get new prospective clients on your email list and will have the ability to continue reaching out to them.
3. Offer Giveaways
The first step for this freelance marketing tip is to have a way to collect emails and/or contact information. (There are a lot of free giveaway programs and free email providers that can help.)
Next, you set up the giveaway for something like a free VIP week, or something else your target audience would love.
Then, you promote it anywhere you can, starting with all of your social media. After you award the prize to winner, you can contact everyone who entered and offer them a short consultation and discovery call.
PromoSimple offers plans for creating giveaways with just a few clicks, though you can of course do it yourself!
4. Offer Free Trainings
Hold on, train my target audience to grow their business without me?? Stay with me for a second. You could contact business coaches and offer to do free trainings for their clients or audiences about how improve their business in your area of expertise.
The people in the training who were always going to take care of things on their own aren’t your targets anyway—but the people who are looking for a trustworthy freelancer as a solution will be so glad they joined your training!
5. Set Up a Summit
Team up with other service providers that have a similar target audience as you (for instance if you’re a graphic designer, team up with a copywriter) and build out a “summit” event where everyone shares their knowledge on a useful topic that relates to their service. You can use Zoom to host it and promote it across all the speakers’ social channels.
The key is that each speaker share the summit information with their network so each of you can reach a new audience! This is more difficult than the other strategies to orchestrate, but the payoff—especially when everyone does their part with the promotion—could be game-changing.
These five freelance marketing strategies are really just the beginning. Once you dig in, you’ll likely find all sorts of new ideas to try. Just be sure that every new idea has one goal: increasing your client base. And focus on one at a time so you can start to see whether a given tactic is giving you the results you want.
Your Turn! What are your favorite freelance marketing strategies? Share in the comments below!
Last Updated on July 1, 2023.
