Marketing = $$$$

Here’s the funny thing about marketing: freelancers hate doing it. We worry about sounding desperate or being sleazy or selling out. But if you don’t tell people your product or service exists, they can’t buy it.

You could have the perfect solution to all of their woes but if they don’t know the solution exists, they can’t buy it.

You aren’t putting a gun to anyone’s head. You aren’t forcing anyone to buy anything. But if you don’t let them know they have the option, you are forcing them to keep struggling.

What you are doing when you market your freelance business is letting people know they have an incredible shortcut out of their struggles and all it costs is money.

Most business owners would rather spend money to have an expert solve the problem than spend their own time and headache learning to solve it themselves (and failing the first several times.) Let them spend the money. Market yourself so they know you exist.

When a business owner has a problem, it’s just one of a dozen other things they have to deal with that day. They probably don’t have the time or energy to figure out what the best solution is or how to find someone to provide it. They’re too busy and tired to make sure the person who has approached them is the best person to help them. I guarantee you that if you aren’t approaching the businesses who need your help, someone else is. And that someone else may not be as good as you are at what you do or as affordable or as lean or even as ethical.

As a freelancer, you have a lot of incredible things you offer your potential clients that other, bigger businesses don’t. For example:

• Low overhead – your rates might feel high to you but find out what a big business in your industry is charging for a consultant’s hour and you’ll feel a lot better
• Agile – you are always learning and improving your skills so you’re on top of the latest developments and trends
• Hands-on – your clients get to work directly with you, not go through seven layers of management
• Personable – you are a human being that your clients can relate to, not a faceless corporation. Don’t undervalue the appeal of that to clients who are probably small businesses themselves
• Ethical – apart from being a good person, your reputation as a freelancer is everything so you keep everything above board

Working with a freelancer like you is often better for a business than working with big business…but do you know what big businesses do that ensures they’re big and growing?

Yea, marketing. Lots and lots of marketing.

So if you want your freelance hustle to be a real business you need to do plenty of marketing too.

Assuming you provide a good service, the only difference between you right now and your freelance business being everything you hope and dream it will be is marketing.

If you can’t stomach the thought of marketing, being a freelancer might not be for you.

If you know you need to market but are struggling to execute, The Freelance Hustle Pitch Pack might be just what you need. In it, we lay out the exact pitch structures and methodology that has helped both of us grow multiple freelance businesses over the last 10 years.

If you want to grow but aren’t sure how to, that’s ok. We can help you with that too. The Freelance Hustle Marketing Plan & Goal Setting Workbook can help you map out your entire marketing calendar for the next year and enable you to check in along the way to ensure you’re on track.

The thing is: you don’t need our products in order to succeed. They are simply a shortcut to get the ball rolling so you don’t waste dozens or hundreds of hours on research about how to market instead of doing the marketing that will grow your business.

If you already have a system and pitch process that works for you, that’s fantastic. The most important thing is that you are marketing your business on a consistent basis.

Because people and businesses who don’t know you exist can’t hire you. If you don’t market to them, you are forcing them to hire someone else, possibly someone who is less skilled or less affordable or less agile or even less ethical than you.

By marketing your business to them, you’re giving them the knowledge that you exist and the option to hire you. No pressure, no guns-to-the-head.

You’re also giving your business the ability to grow and yourself the possibility of projects that you enjoy and enable you to grow.

Consistent marketing is the way to ensure your freelance hustle grows to be the business you want it to be.

So how are you marketing yourself today?

The post Why You Must Market Yourself as a Freelancer appeared first on The Freelance Hustle.