As a freelancer, you have a wide variety of marketing options available to you. Just which ones will bring you the clients you prefer to work with depends — it’s important to make sure that the methods you use allow you to reach the places prospective clients will be.
It’s worth considering a wide variety of options. For that, it’s useful to have a list of options to consult:
- Start a blog
- Go to Chamber of Commerce events and other local business events
- Release products (icons, articles, etc.) that can be used for free with attribution
- Hand out business cards
- Guest post on blogs relevant to your skills
- Attend meetups in your area
- Place your brochures with printers, or other relevant businesses
- Organize a BarCamp or other unconference
- Network online with sites like LinkedIn or Twitter
- Share samples of your work online
- Respond to press queries on Help A Reporter Out
- Sponsor an event
- Suggest a story to a reporter or blogger
- Offer a coupon
- Create a free ebook and post it online
- Write a press release describing something special about your business
- Offer to speak about your specialty at networking events
- Answer questions on LinkedIn Answers, Yahoo Answers and other question sites
- Comment on articles and posts
- Create package deals
- Develop a partnership with a freelancer with a different skillset
- Send out a useful newsletter geared towards your clients
- Provide a free initial consultation
- Join a professional organization
- Add yourself to directories, both online and in print
- Place promotional items in event and conference gift bags
- Run targeted adds
- Volunteer your services to non-profits
- Contact companies that could use your services directly
- Attend alumni events for your school
- Contact past clients
- Attend events for your ideal clients’ industry
- Join online forums
- Print t-shirts listing your website
- Have a giveaway or donate your time as a prize in someone else’s giveaway
- Survey companies in your target market about their needs (and then follow up on those needs)
- Optimize your website for search engines
- Hand out brochures that showcase your projects
- Get great testimonials from past clients
- Teach a class
- Brand yourself as a business
- Start a podcast or videocast
- Sell your services through affiliates
- Work with an agency
- Swap ads with other freelancers
- Send out a postcard or other mailer
- Package your promotional materials or services with other freelancers
- Tell happy clients that you’ll give them a referral discount for any new clients they send your way
- Celebrate the end of a large project with your client
Many of these options are inexpensive, though not all of them are free. That price tag makes it easier to experiment with your options — so do it! Take some time on a regular basis to try out different marketing techniques and see which ones will work for you — and which ones you can adapt. There are even more options out there than are listed here. If you have a marketing technique not listed here, please add it in the comments.
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