It’s one of those timeless freelancer dilemmas. When you’re busy, you don’t have the time to market. Which means that when the work dries up, you have nothing in your pipeline.
So you work feverishly to find work. But prospects and clients sense the desperation in your voice (you think you’re hiding it, but they can still sense it). That only works to repel clients. Which makes you even more anxious. And so the vicious cycle goes.
What’s the solution to conundrum? Spend 10% of your work time every week on a high-impact marketing activity. Schedule that time as if it was for a client project. Schedule it every week without fail. And you’ll rarely encounter dry patches in your business.
Why 10%
Because I’ve never seen anyone else give freelancers a straight answer on this issue. And because 10% is sensible enough that anyone can do it.
If you have more time, do more. And if you have zero work and a pile of bills coming up, spend ALL of your time marketing your business. Treat prospecting as your full-time job until you get some work coming in.
But if you’re very busy and you freelance full time (say, 40 hours or so a week), then four hours a week is still doable.
Heck, even if you were absolutely slammed, you can still squeeze in four hours a week just by waking up an hour earlier Monday through Friday. Not a morning person? Then put in one more hour every evening.
And don’t just do whatever marketing activity feels right at the time. Have a plan so you don’t have to make decisions on the fly. Finally, focus your efforts on marketing activities that yield results — not just the activities you love to do.
The benefits of this “10% rule” compound very quickly. Steady effort yields steady results. This evens out your workload, eliminating much of the peaks and valleys we often experience as freelancers. And even when you’re slammed, getting leads you can’t pursue is good for your self-confidence, which helps you keep your fees where they should be (and even raise them in some cases).
What do you think: Is 10% a reasonable effort level? How do you make the time to market your business? Have you found it hard to develop such a habit? Why or why not?
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Ed Gandia is co-founder of The Wealthy Freelancer and author of the popular e-book Stop Wishing and Start Earning: A Low-Risk Plan to Escape 9-5 and Launch a Profitable Copywriting Business.
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Thanks for this post — there are days when I feel marketing is really a taboo subject for freelancers. We all know that we need to do it, but trying to decide the best marketing methods and the amount of time to spend is the hardest.
Personally, I’ve gotten to the point where I try to spend at least one hour a day on marketing myself. It may sound like a lot, but I think that’s really the bare minimum if I want to keep new projects coming in. I’ve talked to part-time freelancers who can get away with far less, but for a full-timer, it’s crucial to set aside plenty of time for marketing.
Ed:
Thanks for the tip! I would just add that being disciplined about marketing, not desperate, means having the freedom to choose more fulfilling, higher paying, higher profile work.
Mark
Thanks for your comments!
Mark – Good point. The rewards are so great, that if we keep reminding ourselves of the benefits of marketing, we may do it more frequently and consistently.
Thursday – I like your idea of dedicating one hour a day to marketing. That’s very doable. Easy to carve that out in your schedule every day. And that ensures it becomes a habit much faster than saying you’ll dedicate, say, one day a month.
I would also suggest another tactic and that is to find one or two (preferably two) activities that you will do every single month without fail. Schedule it right in with your other work and simply do it as if it is a monthly to do item. I have used this technique for years and I have had very few slow periods in almost 6 years of freelancing. One of my activities is networking. I go to my networking meeting(s)every single week without fail. It is a standing appointment on my calendar. For others that activity may be different. Whatever you choose the secret is simply doing it every single month without fail.
I would then add the 4 hours a week on top that Ed is talking about to do something I wouldn’t normally do. In fact, I am going to try that starting this week to see how it turns out.
That’s a great idea, Michael. I like the consistency of that approach. By committing to working on two tactics every month without fail, you quickly develop the habit. Plus, this keeps you focused. Without it, I find that it’s easy to get distracted and try to do too many things at once (or nothing at all because you get overwhelmed).
One hour of marketing per day: I presume that this means one of hour initiative project work per day, and does not include the time invested in working with the response to those initiatives. Yes?
Michael – That’s right. The 10% recommendation would be for time spent working your marketing plan. Qualifying incoming leads wouldn’t count against this time. I would consider that more of a sales function than marketing.
I would think you’d need to do a lot more than 10% when you are getting started. If you’re not doing more, then you are either really lucky, really good or have a lot of downtime. But I am including sales time in this as well. It’s just a subset of marketing.