The Freelancer Guide to Inbound Marketing

About four years ago, I did something nuts. Well, I do a lot of things that could fall under that category. But this had to do with my freelance writing business.

I admitted something right here on the blog that, well, kind of freaked me out a little.

I wrote a post admitting that for quite a while, I hadn’t marketed.

Actually, in the post I qualify that statement a little. I hadn’t had to market.

At the time, Cathy Miller pointed out the obvious — I wasn’t marketing traditionally, but I was sure networking.

A lot of you do that, too. You show up on social media, you post on forums and blogs, you send notes to your current and former clients to check in….

That’s marketing.

More to the point, that’s Inbound Marketing.

Instead of seeking clients, you’re attracting them.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Freelance writer, you can be pretty damn genius at inbound marketing with just a little effort and attention. In fact, you’re already doing inbound marketing.

• That client who reached out after seeing you on Twitter.
• The one who read your last article.
• The one who saw your LinkedIn post.

[bctt tweet=”You, #freelancewriting pro, are already an inbound marketer.” username=”LoriWidmer”]

It’s all inbound marketing. You’re putting yourself out there without an ask (a.k.a. a sales pitch). You’re just sharing and posting and attracting them in any number of ways, like:

• Interacting with them and others in their industry
• Educating them on something that’s relevant
• Providing valuable content

So how can you ace this inbound marketing stuff? By giving your potential customers something that’s valuable to them.

What’s valuable to your intended audience? Studies, advice on working from home (tell me you’re already writing these posts for various social media sites), trends in their industry, anything that would be newsworthy or helpful to them qualifies.

Here are ways in which you can reach them (and potentially get them coming back for business):

Content creation.

You’re a freelance writer. If you want to sell them on your services, show them what they can expect. If you don’t have a blog or site dedicated to their industry, that’s fine. It’ll make it tougher, but it’s not going to hamper you. (I have a site that doesn’t do a lot in that regard — my bad.) Guest post. Write articles for association newsletters or publications. Post on LinkedIn (plenty of you already make good use of this). Just get content in front of them.

Offer free content.

If you have a website (and you should), write an e-book and offer it to your potential customers. Doesn’t have to be long — think “4 Ways to Market on a Budget” kind of thing. Trade their email address for your e-book. What do you do with that email?

Continue offering value.

I’m not one to go whole hog into a sale the minute someone offers up an email address. I was on the receiving end of some pretty aggressive (and annoyingly frequent) emails by someone who was — I’m not kidding — teaching others how to market. Instead of loading someone’s in box and making them cringe every time you see their emails (I got to that point with this particular marketer), do something that shows you’re in it to educate or inform. A newsletter, webinar, Twitter chat, anything offering advice or experts to talk about something that’s relevant to their businesses is a great way to build trust and rapport.

Send infrequent (but regular) sales pitches.

Look, the idea is to sell to them eventually, or determine if they’re even in the market. But if you lead with this, you lose them. The marketer I mentioned earlier was someone I know and had respected. The services I’d bought from him were good. But the oversell was constant. I couldn’t take it.

So infrequent may mean every month, you send one sales pitch to your list. I’d go beyond that and instead of automating it, I’d be writing personal emails to these people. You can provide the same pitch, but make sure they feel you’re talking to them, not at them.

Thank them in public.

One of the best (and most respected) Twitter folks thanks every single person who has shared her tweets. Every week, you see her note thanking you in a list of folks who’d shared her content. That she thanks you at all is enough — it doesn’t need to be so personalized that she thanks six people separately (because then, her Twitter feed would look a bit, well, suck-up-y). But do thank your clients for sharing your content. Take care in sharing thanks for a project well done — a lot of the people I work with don’t want to broadcast what they’re working on or with whom.

If you build it, they will come. This is not a quick-and-dirty marketing plan for freelance writing success, either. It’s a long-term plan for building a great network that rewards you time and again for your efforts.

Writers, what do you do right now that could be considered inbound marketing?
Have you ever had a more formal process? Why/why not?