Note from Jennifer: This week I’ll be publishing a blog post each day to help you kick off 2023 on the right foot. I’ve got a few brand-new blogs planned as well as a few posts that I am updating. Next week, I will go back to writing once or twice a week, but wanted you to have the tools and information you need this week to help you make 2023 your best year ever as a freelancer. 

Many writers start the New Year by saying that they are going to land new clients. But I strongly advise against setting a specific number of new clients as your goal. Check out this post to find out why. Instead, I recommend focusing on marketing tasks, which are in your control. But you probably feel that there are 345 million different things you should be doing to market your business. And if you are anything like me, it’s easy to feel totally overwhelmed and then do absolutely nothing, but drink Diet Mountain Dew and stress eat.  

Even after earning $200K in 2021, I hit a slow spot this fall, a really slow spot with almost no work. During the weeks when I ramped up my marketing efforts to earn $27K in November, I spent a lot of time thinking about marketing. I realized that there are only three different ways to get clients. Yes, really only three. And it made a huge difference in how I approach marketing and my business. I wanted to start the year off by talking about these three pillars today and then for the rest of this week, I’m going to share more about how to use these pillars to get new clients. 

1. You reach out cold to a potential client (Outbound marketing)

Every time you reach out to a client that you don’t know or have a previous connection with then you are doing outbound marketing. For many content marketing writers, their main type of outbound marketing is applying to job ads. Because of the high volume of applicants as well as the fact that many job ads are low-paying, job ads are my least favorite form of outbound marketing.

By sending LOIs and LinkedIn messages to clients in your niche likely to hire you and use freelancers, you can sometimes land high-paying clients. However, you typically have to send a large number of LOIs and follow up regularly over months to see a solid return rate. Because potential clients don’t know you or have any familiarity with your work, outbound marketing is the least effective type of marketing, even with highly targeted LOIs. Outbound marketing also takes a crapton of time because you must manually find all of the opportunities and then craft an email or LinkedIn message. 

Some writers feel that LOIs are a waste of time and not the best way to get work. I agree to some extent.  But, I feel that outbound marketing plays an important role in building a high-income freelance business, especially in the early stages of your career. It’s really hard to build a freelance business with zero outbound marketing. But the goal should be to get to the point where you no longer have to send out any LOIs – more on this later. 

2.  A client finds you from your online presence (Inbound marketing)

Inbound marketing is when a client finds you online and then contacts you, such as an agency sending you an email from the Contact Form on your website or a company sending you a LinkedIn message after viewing your profile. Landing work from your Contently or Skyword Profile also counts as inbound marketing because the client found you from your online portfolio. 

Setting up and maintaining your website, LinkedIn profile and online portfolios takes time and effort. But your inbound marketing materials are constantly working for you to help you find new clients even while you are sleeping on vacation or working on other clients or saving homeless dachshunds from animal shelters.

Many businesses head to Google and LinkedIn when they need a writer. By using inbound marketing effectively, such as using your niche in your LinkedIn title and having your website rank on Google for your niche, you make it easier for these clients to find you and hire you.  Because the client is already interested in you by the time they reach out, inbound marketing often turns into a new client at a much higher rate than outbound marketing. Additionally, it’s a lot less time-consuming to spend a few hours a month maintaining your online presence than sending out 100 LOIs. However, many writers overlook the importance of inbound marketing and don’t focus their attention on making it easy for clients to find them online.

3. Someone in your network refers you to a client (Referral network)

I personally think that having a strong referral network is the key to earning a high income. Your network includes your current clients, past co-workers, your neighbors, other writers, and anyone else you know that could send work your way. Referrals are the most effective way to land work because. clients are much more likely to hire you if you are recommended by someone that they trust.

When you have a strong referral network, new clients come to you with very little effort on your part. We are going to talk a lot this spring about how to build your own referral network. However, in the meantime, the best way to get referrals from other writers is to give referrals to your writer friends yourself. Additionally, you should ask your current clients for referrals to other projects at their agency or company. While it seems that they would automatically think of you and reach out, that doesn’t always happen, especially at agencies where project teams often work independently from each other.

Using the Three Pillars to Get More Work

I think that freelancers should aim to get to the point where all of your work comes to you through inbound marketing and referrals. I rarely send out LOIs anymore because I get pretty much all of new clients from LinkedIn, my website or referrals from writers or clients. However, it took me many years to get to this point and a lot of focused effort. 

Just like other businesses most freelance writers need to do outbound marketing as they are growing. If you are leaving a full-time job or have a lot of industry connections, you may be able to rely mainly on referrals to get your business ramped up, which is an amazing position to be in. But that wasn’t the case for me – I started with zero clips and zero connections. And it isn’t the case for most freelance writers.  

Many writers spend most, if not all, of their time in the beginning with outbound marketing. However, I think that writers should also heavily focus on building their referral network and creating inbound marketing right from Day 1. It takes a lot of time and effort to get these efforts mature enough to the point where work comes to you so the sooner you get started the better. However, if you have little to no work coming in then it makes more sense to spend time on outbound marketing than waiting around for work to show up. I’ve personally landed many great clients through outbound marketing over the years and know many other writers who built their businesses this way. But the goal should be to get to the point where you no longer have to do outbound marketing at all. 

You don’t become a high-income freelancer overnight. And it doesn’t happen because you updated your LinkedIn profile or sent a great LOI. You start earning a high income because of many different marketing activities and efforts that include inbound, outbound, and referrals. Yes, it can feel overwhelming. But many other freelancers just like you are earning a high income right now. And there is absolutely no reason that you can’t join the ranks of earning $100K or even $200K. You’ve got this. 

What are your thoughts on the 3 pillars? Which pillar have you found to be most successful? How did you get to the point of no longer needing to send LOIs?