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Most freelance writers are well aware that marketing makes a difference. Marketing can mean the difference between pounding the pavement looking for writing jobs and wading through inquiries about whether or not you can take on new clients just itching… ready to send you some PayPal love. Marketing makes a difference to how many feasts you get to take advantage of and how many famines you have to endure. I know that writers need to market. I preach it all the time. But lately, I hadn’t been practising what I preach.
I had great volumes in 2010. I had more than enough work for myself and often kept several team members busy with my overflow and regular bulk projects. In 2010 I’d made 30% more than I’d made in 2009. 2011 was going to be FANTASTIC! But I made a mistake.
I stopped marketing.
In Jan-March, nothing special happened. I trudged along. Volumes started to dip, though. I wasn’t worried because a few clients said they were brewing big things. I banked on what was in my pipeline. But some of those things didn’t happen. Things started making me nervous in March. It got a bit scary in April. Then in May of this year, I invoiced half my usual monthly amount. NOT cool!
What happened? Two big projects I’d been expecting to do went on hold. One busy client disappeared. Another client’s payments slowed to a crawl due to PayPal challenges. A regular client asked me to put his two ongoing monthly projects on hold temporarily as he had to cut his online marketing budget. Another client who usually ordered a lot of monthly SEO articles stopped placing orders, probably due to the Google Panda update. A few other things happened as well, including some family tragedy, so I was off my game. I didn’t act fast. Suddenly I was up the creek without a paddle. I gave myself a shake and did what I needed to do. I started marketing.
In the last bit, I’ve rekindled my love affair with marketing my business. Marketing is fun and it’s profitable. But it’s one of those things you have to make time for. Within 2 days of starting up I was getting queries. A few of those queries turned into orders and one turned into a referral. I started some social networking (which I hadn’t been doing for a while) too, and heard from two old clients who hadn’t ordered in a few months plus heard from a few others that had some symbiotic opportunities to discuss.
The moral? Don’t stop marketing. Ever. I’ve said in the past that writers shouldn’t be complacent but it happened to me and I lost the grip on the reigns of my business. I’ve taken them back! Marketing on an ongoing basis is akin to being a good chess player who is continually thinking ahead.
I’m now assigning half an hour a day plus half a morning a week to do marketing activities — at a minimum. Even if work is coming out the ying yang, watch your volumes. If they start to dip, even a little, up your marketing efforts. The more you do it, the more techniques will reveal themselves as great go-to places to quickly drum up business and revenue.
Coming Soon:
This summer I’m going to write a marketing e-book to help others learn how to market your writing business so that you don’t have to write for content mills (that pay lousy and expect you to write a $100 article for $15.00) or troll the online job boards to chase after jobs that hundreds of others writers are chasing, too. Stay tuned for more details. Subscribe to this blog at: http://thefreelancewritersblog.com/feed/ to get notified of new posts.
Happy Marketing!
