Making the switch from working for a digital marketing agency to becoming a freelancer is a daunting prospect. But with a little tenacity and boldness, I believe it’s something any digital marketer can achieve. From the experiences I have gained since taking the leap myself, here are my top five tips for venturing out and making it on your own.
Be Confident in Your Ability
If, like me, you don’t have a background in sales, reaching out to your first few businesses to find out if they’d like to utilise your services can be pretty unnerving. But if you go for it, being confident in your ability and what you have to offer, you may be surprised by how quickly you start having optimistic conversations with prospective clients.
Specialise in an Industry
After working for an agency for several years, you will almost certainly have experience working across a number of industries. When you start reaching out to businesses, I would recommend leveraging this experience by focussing on one or two of the industries that you are most familiar with and most enjoy working in. This means you can reassure prospective clients that their digital marketing strategy will be in the hands of someones who understands the intricate ins and outs of their industry – a huge perk that could be the difference between work going to you or another freelancer.
Make an Impression With a Standout Presentation
A carefully crafted presentation, which showcases your skills and abilities, highlights your experience, clearly outlines your strategy and demonstrates your creativity can make all the difference when looking to land a new client.
Your presentation is the ideal place to demonstrate your industry know-how and also to show your capability to immerse yourself in your prospect’s business and marketplace. When outlining your approach to delivering a successful campaign and explaining your strategy, be sure to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your prospect’s current strategy and how you believe it can be enhanced. Also, for each service highlighted, it’s a great idea to offer a few examples of projects you have previously worked on and any applied optimisations that have generated positive results.
Grow Your Online Presence
I didn’t have a website when I first set out as a freelancer, but as soon as I had some case studies to talk about, I didn’t waste time setting one up.
The benefits were instant and numerous – I now had a tool that established my online presence, gave me additional resources to disseminate, showcased my offering and experience, offered me a ‘hub’ to link marketing communications to, and increased my credibility as a new freelancer on the scene. A website is also an excellent brand tool – it reflects your ambition and capabilities, demonstrates your skill, creativity and eye for detail, and increases your trustworthiness and professionalism.
Be Flexible
My final piece of advice is to be as flexible as possible. Be flexible with your offering, your costs, the way you complete and deliver work, and the way you communicate with clients. This may go a long way in securing some work, which is important in your early days as a freelancer when gaining those first few clients is particularly vital.
