The Freelancers Guide to Online Marketing
There is a ton of content these days about online marketing.
There are courses, books and programs for every social media network and online marketing tactic imaginable.
Many people get completely overwhelmed when they try to learn online marketing.
The truth is, online marketing for freelancers is extremely simple.
In this post, I am going to teach you a simple online marketing strategy that will generate an endless supply of new leads.
This is not a tactic, this is an overall strategy for your freelance marketing.
This strategy takes time although once it is built, you will be amazed at the constant flow of new leads coming to your inbox every single week.
Step 1) Build a portfolio sales page
At the core of your marketing strategy, you need a portfolio sales page.
Essentially, this is a single page of your website that will become the focus of all of your marketing efforts.
Everything you do online will be focused on driving traffic and visitors to this page.
This page does not need to contain too much information. In fact, less is often more.
Here are the few essential things that your portfolio website must include
Positioning statement - I help ________ (do or accomplish) ______________
Portfolio of past projects - Create a simple way to display your past projects. These past projects can then click off to other pages if the client wants to see more
Services - A list of the services that you provide
About - Keep it brief but give a bit of background about you
Client testimonials - Give visitors social proof that others have been happy working with you
Contact form
It is this simple, you really don't need more than that.
Example :
Visit my sales page to see an example
If you need an example, take a look at my sales page https://jakejorgovan.squarespace.com.
This simple site is the source of nearly all of my online leads and has substantially grown my income.
If you need help building your own sales page, take my free uDemy course where I show you how to build a Squarespace website without writing a single line of code.
Step 2) Send the right traffic to this page
This sounds simple because it is.
Build a website and send qualified traffic to that site.
You can generate traffic in a handful of ways, below are just a few tactics that have worked for me.
Social Media Profiles - Anywhere you have a profile for you and your business online, make sure that the profile links directly to this page. Don't just send them to your home page, instead send them to your sales page. LinkedIn in a particular has proven to be very effective.
Job Marketplaces - If you use job marketplaces such as oDesk or eLance, be sure to link in your profile and in your job applications to your portfolio site. These sites can often draw employers to work with you outside of the platform.
Online Directory Listings - Are there any online listings with trade associations, chambers of commerce or anywhere you can list yourself online. Sometimes these listings can be a waste of time, but other times these can produce incredible results
Guest blog posts - Write guest blog posts about your area of expertise for relevant bloggers. Be sure to include a link in your bio and anywhere in the article linking to your sales page
Youtube Channel - Create a Youtube channel talking about your practice. In the first line of each video description, include a link to your sales page.
Referrals - When you get a referral, send them to your sales page to show off your expertise and professionalism.
E-mail Signature - Add your sales page to your e-mail signature to make your acquaintances and friends available of your offerings
There is no silver bullet with how to generate traffic to your site.
Don't plan on just utilizing one method to attract attention. Spread your efforts out across a few.
Some methods will work better than others, although if you have a diverse range of traffic sources, then you will have more leads coming in than you can handle.
The bottom line
These are just a handful of the ways to draw traffic to your website.
There are many more options on generating traffic to your website, but first you must get the strategy and the sales page right.
The bottom line is this.
Build a sales page that shows off your portfolio
Attract the right traffic to that sales page
That is it.
Don't try to overcomplicate this with incentives and tricks to try and lure prospects into buying from you.
Forget about conversion rates and all the BS tricks you read online.
Instead, treat your visitors as people.
Be genuine and treat your visitors like you would like to be treated.
If you can do that you will earn their trust and have more work than you can handle.