Key steps to market yourself and secure clients
Where do I start?
In April, I wrote the freemeup blog – Overcoming the fear of change. This blog explored some reasons that stop us from leaping into the unknown, and how to overcome that fear using deliberate experimentation.
Here, I discuss how you can take the next step by identifying your potential clients and determine how best to connect with them. Understanding your potential clients can help you:
- Understand what services your clients need and how you can provide them.
- Identify the decision makers of an organisation, how best to communicate with them, and get them signed up.
Marketing is all about me, right?
Not necessarily. A good first step towards marketing yourself is to identify your potential clients. Buyer Personas can help you think about who they are and how they think. By creating buyer personas, you can start answering questions about your potential clients, such as:
- Why will this person be my client – will I be providing services they can use?
- Why will this person use my services – what differentiates my services from others?
- What are this person’s goals and how are they measured – will I help them meet their targets?
- What are this person’s pain points – do my services solve their problems?
- What is this person’s role – what are their responsibilities, and can they engage me directly?
- How does this person like to communicate – do they regularly post/comment/like on social media, or do they prefer to communicate via email/phone/in person? Do they go to conferences?
To create your buyer personas, you will need to do some research first to find out about your target audience. This may require asking potential clients for information to collect the data you need to complete your personas.
A great resource provided by myNZTE provides a PDF template to create buyer personas and also provides ideas about what to ask potential clients.
FYI – if you are currently employed review your IEA to check for non-compete clauses in your contract as this may limit your list of potential clients.
Personal Branding is all about your unique promise of value and what you bring to the table. It’s (also) about getting your potential clients to choose you as the only solution to their problem.
Clarify your services
Now you have a good understanding of what your potential clients need, you can solidify your service offerings. Spend time defining:
- Who are my clients?
- What are their problems?
- What are my solutions?
- Why are my services needed now?
- How are my services different?
Keep your answers short, clear, relevant and differentiated. Clearly state the credible benefits of your services.
How do I market myself?
Once you have a good understanding of what your clients want and how you can meet that need, think about how you want to advertise the services you are offering and how you will promote yourself.
Identifying how best to reach out to your buyers helps you navigate the next step of your marketing journey – organising your comms. You may want to think about branding yourself on social media sites such as LinkedIn. This Hnry guide is a great starting place to grow your brand on LinkedIn:
Grow your freelance work by posting regularly on LinkedIn
For a more in-depth approach, they have also written a great article on personal branding for those who want to use multiple branding resources:
Pick up the phone
However, promoting yourself on LinkedIn might not give you the final boost you need to secure those contracts. Get in touch with potential clients and discuss how your services can help them meet their needs.
To do this, you might splash out on a road trip and line up meetings with several potential clients over a few days. You can also use industry events like conferences to schedule meetings. If your budget doesn’t allow for these options, then connecting via email with a follow-up phone call is also effective.
Reaching out to clients to ask for work is a much better way of securing work than waiting for the work to come to you via social media alone.
Get a signed contract
To get the best chance of converting those potential clients into signed contracts, here are a few final tips:
- Don’t make leads wait – the level of interest shown by a potential client can decline rapidly if you do not show interest and respond.
- Don’t drop a lead if they don’t convert the first time – keep going back to them, keep offering them your services. You may not have what they want the first time around, but constant improvements to your business could result in the service they want.
- Ask for the contract – your potential lead has asked all the right questions and seems genuinely interested, but they still didn’t commit. Did you follow up by providing quotes or a contract? Did you explain the process to complete the engagement?
- Spend time maintaining your brand – keep posting about your services, writing articles, and highlighting your areas of expertise and knowledge. If clients can see you are available and you have the services they want, they will use you.
- If you have a business website, keep it updated, easy to understand, and simple to use. Make it easy to find out what services you are offering and how to contact you.
- Obtain social proof and develop trust – obtain reviews from existing clients. Potential clients love to review a business/service before they engage. Post statements from clients (with their permission) or ask them to provide references.
- Continuously research your market – what might be viable one year, may not be relevant the next. Continue having conversations with your existing clients and keep up with their needs.
How can we help?
Freemeup has partnered with Watersorted – an online marketplace for professionals working in the water industry, where you can list your business and sell your services. We can help you register and set up a shop, all for free! Check out https://www.watersorted.com/ if you want to find out more about this awesome marketplace.
We also love sharing your good news! We would love to repost any LinkedIn posts, articles, etc. that you create and let others know who you are and what you do.
Disclaimer: All content provided on freemeup.nz is for informational purposes only and is intended as a general information resource regarding the matters covered. It is not tailored to cover specific situations and circumstances and shouldn’t be taken as direct professional advice. Freemeup makes no representations to the accuracy or completeness of the information found on this site or found by following any links on this site and will not be held liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the use of this information.
