Many businesses are going through a reset right now, and creative freelance business owners are no different.
As we emerge from a state of lockdown and the economy starts opening up again, it’s a good time to reset your marketing strategy.
You need a marketing plan.
If you don’t have a marketing plan, you should create one. If you have a marketing plan, how is it working for you? Are you following it?
I wanted to walk you through three questions that you should ask when designing a marketing plan, or when revising if you already have one.
Marketing, which is basically putting your work into the marketplace, is a process.
There is no single formula for success. What works for me will not necessarily work for you. So the idea is you take the strategy and then build your own tactics into it, the goal of marketing is to establish your solidify it in your audience base get more eyes on your website in your portfolio, and be top of mind when it comes to assigning projects.
You probably heard this before but I’ve got three questions that you should answer before you start marketing again.
Number one who is your audience? It may not be what it was six months ago. But understanding who you want to work with what your ideal client actually looks like it’s crucial to shaping your marketing and self-promotion efforts you have to clearly define who you’re targeting Anton you should know why you’re targeting certain parts of the market And finding your ideal client one way versus eighth defining it another way if you don’t target your marketing efforts yourself promotion efforts will not be focused and therefore they won’t be effective.
Being able to clearly articulate what your ideal client looks like and what what it doesn’t look like at the same time is going to help you focus your efforts to appeal to those most likely to work with you you won’t waste time or money or energy
Second question you said you should ask is what is your USP or your unique selling point this is basically your brand promise what do you offer to your audience and what you offer to your audience can’t just be photography services or wedding photography services or children’s book illustration and there has to be something more specific that makes you unique that gives your target audience and understanding of your uniqueness among all the wedding photographers out there and all the children’s book illustrators out there if you don’t differentiate you’re knocking to stand out differentiation is different than positioning differentiation is your uniqueness your distinct attributes you were distinct approach. Think that through and write it down rock what makes you different from your direct competitors?
And the third question you need to ask how’s your website your website is the hub it’s the homebase of your marketing everything should feed into it all your social media your email it’s where you send prospective clients to look at your work it’s the home of your portfolio and it should be stellar it should be amazing the hands is good and dribble is good and deviant art is good but those are not home it’s your primary connection point with your target audience if you haven’t considered your website as central to everything you do to promote your work you need to change that thinking and make it central because having a competitive highly focused highly functional website that well-organized that makes sense that provides a clear point of contact to get in touch with you that showcases not just your work but how you solve business problems with your work that’s crucial
so if you can map out take some time to write out answers to these questions cause that’s going to help you devise copywriting for your marketing materials and your emails and if you do this you’re going to have greater focus going forward you’re going to be better differentiated if you figure things out and then follow through and if you tweak your website to attract the kind of clientele that you desire to work with you will have a better time of it connecting with new prospects and converting those prospects into paying clients.
