• Session 3: How to be a Successful Freelancer - Winning New Clients
• We looked at the 'skills leg' on the stool on one day 1, the 'finances leg' of the stool yesterday and today we will be looking at the 'marketing leg' on the stool.
• Freelancing is much more on the map than it ever was. For example, a commercial made by Fiverr (a company where you can find the perfect freelance services for your business) was played during the Super Bowl this year. It is a huge deal and a big event who has secured an advertising spot and a big part of the audience look forward to the ad breaks as they are specially tailored to the event with celebrity cameos, appropriate current affairs, feel-good moments, and a lot of humour. Fiverr took a spot, and if a company like that is doing a huge commercial then freelancing is certainly on the map. Fiverr is low cost, commodity, with a whole spectrum of freelancing. Just like on the high street we have a range of stores. Fiverr is on one end, high end specialist skills on the other. It's a big game changer for freelancers. Good production values into it, humour, making fun of the misdirection of Trump booking to do a conference at the Four Seasons hotel but ending up at a gardening centre instead.
• Customer Focused Thinking
• Why do companies hire freelancers? Why is this client hiring me? Specialist skills or am I adding capacity? I will tell a different stories depending on which angle it is.
• Specialist skills: take them on quite journey to tell them what I do. They probably don't have someone in-house doing what I do. Sell them the high-end work I do. They won't understand that. Take that client on the journey to help them understand.
• Alison shares an experience of where she made video content 14-15 years ago before the social media explosion of video. Companies were trying to know how video could impact their business. "A day in the life of your company is very boring. People-stories and the narrative are more impactful. Filming techniques." Specialist skills but meeting at the point of knowledge for the client.
• If we are coming in to add capacity for a client they are going to want to know if we can deliver, technicalities of our job, they will know about our area and will be testing our knowledge on it.
• Consider what journey do I need to take the client on when talking to a client and pitching?
• Why me? Think of those different ways we can add value. Are we fulfilling a need, increasing sales, developing new opportunities for the client, saving money on the bottom line. Questions we are asking ourselves.
• Articulating "brand me". Where are the places where we can put our messages? What are my marketing assets? Where will we get the message out?
• What things can I create? Email is some kind of marketing, (you could have mail chimp, ERM, etc). Email is gentle bits of marketing. "I saw you did this piece of work, this project is great, congratulations on getting this job!" Don't underestimate the power of an email and reconnecting.
• CV. Not all sectors require this. Biography, a bit abut yourself - can be on your website. • Portfolio: think about what the 2 or 3 pieces the client I'm pitching to will resonate with most. Instead of a chronological view of work/progress, show powerful pieces to showcase skills with a few backup options. Same with showreels. Proposals. Presentations. Website. With the website particularly, at what point will people visit your site and on google how will they find out bout you through another route? What is the messaging your website is going to have? It's is unlikely to be found through that first google search.
• It will be networking and sector databases that people find your site. A database is a group of people who work in the same industry, crew databases fo example, national database and local database (you can be on one or both). If someone is filming in a certain location and they need someone, you will come up on that list. Local database and communities; local businesses and services, councils. Where can I put my details?
• To put on the database: All my contact details, my services, company, and that I'm freelancing. That database can be the first point that someone comes across you. As much as they are really boring, you don't want someone to scroll past. Engaging information that puts you in a good light allowing someone to then go to your website.
• So far we've discussed the website, instagram, portfolio, showreel, bio, start up, reviews and testimonials, business cards.
• What will help me get work and new client? With sector databases, try to keep track of which ones you have registered on and update them regularly.
• Social media great way of building awareness. So many different social media sites.
• Going to events, online or in real life. Selling yourself. Talking to people. Being active in chat. Being on camera. You are your best marketing asset. You are selling YOU.
• LinkedIn is great CV platform.
• Wordpress is great for websites.
• What do your potential customers look like? Can you visualise the sort of people you want to be working with? Who are the customers? Where are they? What value do you offer them? When do they want our services? An events company will want media lining up with an event for example. Where in the client cycle do our services come in? Is it a seasonal thing? When is a good time to pitch to clients? Crucially want to if they are the decision maker? We won't sell that day if they don't make the sale. That person can influence the sale so tell them a different story. To influence the decision maker to buy our services. How our services can make the influencer look great in the company etc. Where we add value will be important for that influencer.
• Who are these customers. What kind of company? Local, international, sectors?
• What does a good customer look like to us? Can be someone who pays a good price, gives interesting work, allows flexibility. Are they nice to work with? Organised? Pay on time? Are there any red lines? Can start to rate our customers. If demand becomes high, we want to put our prices up, decide who we start shedding.
• Example: Animator wants to work for Pixar. They have identified what the client looks like. The next steps: He needed to update his portfolio, polish the style, the content, the quality. Needed to network on social media to the right people in the right circles.
• I have a few musicians engaging with my paintings. Always a sense of engaging publicly or in a DM, "have you ever thought of having someone develop an abstract record cover for you?" Plant those seeds. Be brave, ask. Socialise.
• Competition. Direct competition and indirect competition.
• Example of Allison's experience setting up and working at a female training school for riding motorbikes. A man on the same road, doing a similar business, tried to scare her off his patch. Alison was selling the dream of the open road, akin to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. She was building competition with her clients' disposable income. Uptake in opportunity in a male dominated field. The female clients, 9/10 have never rode a motorbike before and need patience. Pacing of each school was different. Focus on indirect competition paid off much more than the perceived competition of the man and his school and his students and his audience were far different. Tapping into a different audience. Alison held her ground with this man and was not deterred, because she knew her audience was not the same. Men were not going to come to her school where the pace was slower and her clients were not going to go to his where the pace was quicker.
• Can our competitors be our collaborators? Are they our competitors? Winning bigger clients together. Reassurance and resilience.
• Where is are our competition? It has hanged this past year. Globalisation of opportunity. Covid has shown us things can exist entirely online. No longer a need for face-to-face meetings. "Me and my secret sauce" and what I can add to clients. Anyone can be anywhere. But anyone anywhere can squat on my turf equally. Work with people all over the place. Who are the ideal customers? Don't all have to be local necessarily. How much has to be face to face, if at all?
• Strategies for finding clients: Push: pushing our message out there but getting customers to come to us. How we can add value? Pull them towards us.
• Case Study: The Freelancing Bible front cover - Alison Grade's book needed a cover design and lettering. @Letterjack on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/letterjack/) Brazilian calligrapher, lettering artist and educator Jackson Alves. His social media is clear, concise, and consistent. Pengiun wanted a freelancer to match with the values of a book on freelancing. Penguin didn't know who they waned but searched through hashtags on instagram and found him. Jackson had never designed a book cover before but was keen to try. Through his clear and concise portfolio they could see he could deliver through lettering.
• ALTR model. The role that social media can play and the role we need to play. Awareness Liking Trial and Repeat. a customer can't buy from us until they know about us, like us, and return to us.
• Example customers on a graph. 50% awareness, 40% like, only 10% are trialing/buying but those same 10% are coming back and repeating purchases.
• Need to shift from 'liking' to 'trialing'. How do we get them in front of us? That's what will transform things. How can you build on that and go from there.
• Awareness to Liking: Building a Social Media presence. We know "why me", we know how we add value. Is it through the use of a blog and regular blog posts/ engagement, is it video, pictures? Ads? What is the right platform for you?
• Which platforms? We have touched on LinkedIn which is great for building up a picturee of your employment in a digital CV style and connecting with people. Profile up there really neatly. Groups can be spammy. Great place to connect and address book. Depending on your sector it can help you but increasingly having a presence can help. Connections builds credibility. More connections the better. Consider joining Dots which is like a creative's LinkedIn.
• Instagram: make good use of hashtags to increase credibility (I've done separate webinar on Instagram for professionals and had feedback on my profile!)
• Twitter. Key people in your sector and in your area. On the ground. Different sectors.
• Film and TV industry is on Facebook and Facebook groups. For my consideration: Is there an abstract painters' Facebook group? Galleries? Lots of connections in there perhaps to tell my story to, share my instagram/website with...
• Local groups can be invaluable. Shoutouts etc. Doesn't mean you need to post in all of them. Worth being in those groups for opportunities.
• TikTok, Discord, Artfol.
• Freelance platforms (lower-cost work) such as aforementioned Fiverr, Upwork, Freelance.com
• Freelance platforms with higher-end work: Freelancer Club, the Dots, Underpinned.
• Why freelancing is like dating. First impressions count. Need to believe you bring utility. You need to believe in yourself and own the room. Seeking long term relationship; in freelance it is valuable to start new projects and know how we work. Need to share values. Courtship is important. Get to know someone. Start low key and build, don't whisk away immediately as you will tend to fall out the other side.
• Be someone you want to spend time with. If you aren't good company, you are likely to get the work to start with but you need to be a nice person to keep clients returning to you for more work and referrals. Good conversation, pleasure going onto those zoom calls.
• There is something called Dunbar's number which is 150. We all have about 150 people in our personal network, if we met each other out of context, we can happily sit down in a cafe for a coffee and casually chat.
• "Finding clients to date." Who is in your network? Who are those 150 people? Identify them.
• What role can these people play in our network. Sponsors talking about me when I'm not in the room. Letting people know i'm a freelancer.
• Mentors, people ahead of us in their career, help with advice, opportunities, refer other work that isn't up their street.
• Introducers. Can't offer me work directly but have people in their own networks who I can talk to and might be interested in working with me. You'll get those first meetings through the introducers, That is how we grow and build our networks. Who are the people in our network, how do I reach out. How can I get those introductions?
• If you make a document of people's names and contact details o start building your network digitally, data protect it.
• A winning email should take 15 seconds to read and win 15 minutes of their time. Don't ask a lot of involved questions. No "War and Peace" or a Dissertation. Weeks will go by with no response, there will be so much in it to unlock that not everyone will have the time to reply. Short email for quick response.
• Opener: A polite hello
• Hook line: Outline the problem / need you perceive the customer to have
• Premise: I am the best at solving your problem / need because...
• Proof: Talk to this 3rd party they'll collaborate
• if you are being introduced in your network, so and so recommended that we talk, someone in common, how about we have a call on this date? Winning email to win first date. All about growing and building your network.
• You may think someone doesn't want your services but they will know people who do!
• Prepare for the call. Research the person: their projects, clients, people you have in common. How you can solve their problem. Ask yourself 'why me?' How can you talk their language?
• The first date with a client: Have your pitch ready. Listen. Like any date, we need to listen to the other person. What is missing? What do they think they need to solve their problem? If we are offering specialist services they may have a different idea of using our skills to solve their problem. You are building a relationship for the future. Be someone they want to work with. Juggling between pitching, listening, smiling, recognising buying signals. and knowing when to stop selling and moving to that buying phase.
• Conclude with meeting the actions. If we are going in to add capacity we need to conclude. You want to drive that forward;
• If we come up with a clear blueprint: a plan of action. pulling plan together, a point of reference of how we work together. a plan of working up to speed. Concluding he meeting, we won't get paid for this meeting but it can be used to drive the relationship forward.
• The second date: time to sell them a little thing. First qualify the client. They need your services, they have a budget for your services, they want your services now. So I'll do that for £xx. There will be three possible answers - yes, no or maybe. Decipher why "no" or "maybe". You thought you were going to get a yes from the successful all and first date so where is the hesitation coming from? Is it the budget? is it the timing?
• Developing further opportunities with existing clients: clear communications. managing expectations, measure your time, finish your job, invoice promptly, temptation of over delivering and managing that, selling whilst delivering through phases and asking for feedback. Structured way of feedback can strengthen relationships and opportunities. 3 stars and a wish - what could have gone better. Improving the wish and see opportunities within.
• The "Buzz Lightyear" mindset. Customer at the centre at what we do. Longterm relationship rather than just getting the job done in the timeframe.
• Knowing how you work, working well together, and keeping that good relationship. Can you do this, that, these opportunities? Coming back for more. Great freelancers starts with why me, value, unpick how do I find those clients that value me. Based on skills.
• 3 skillsets securing the 3 legs of the stool.
• Great freelancers understand - Why me? What do I do? How do I find clients who value me?
Reflection:
This has got me thinking in a more customer focused why and though that lens, and how I can start to think of my clients, what they look like, where they exist, and how I can use my existing network to get sponsors, mentors, and introducers for work. I would also like to network with and message Alison regarding my future website and social media content. Videos will be a part of that but I don’t have the level of sight to do that myself. I would like to know anyone that she may know as she comes from a professional filming background. I have a story to tell that would be more impactful through reels or IGTV or a video format on a website and this session has got me thinking more about the "assets."
I had never thought about securing clients in such a structured way before through multiple "dates" or meetings but it makes sense to keep ongoing communication and to section out the wants and needs. Building up a network to develop work and opportunities is going to be very important and looking at friends and family is a vital starting point. Who do they know and what opportunities can come from that? I never considered that before either but there is value in starting small and building from there.
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