Marketing Dilemmas

On Anne Wayman’s About Freelance Writing site, someone from another country asked how to market oneself when making cold calls and follow-up calls to marketing mailings aren’t feasible due to distance. This was after I’d suggested reading Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer and following it verbatim. A good question, and one that deserves some pondering.

As Bowerman’s book states, one should make contact via email or mail and follow up with a phone call. So what to do if you’re in another hemisphere/on another continent? I know I for one wouldn’t want to pay the toll charges from India to America, even if the gigs were guaranteed.

Maybe the answer is this – modify the way you market. Instead of relying on the phone at all, conduct business over the Internet. Email makes it easier, as does instant messaging. And if you just can’t wrap your mind around that one, try looking into either a prepaid calling card that offers decent per-minute rates, or invest in a service like Vonage that allows you to talk over your Internet service and not charging you the moon to do so.

Let’s discuss! Any ideas?