Freelance Marketing

Hey guys -

I assume a lot of you are doing just this - so I hoped I could get some feedback.

As freelance artists, how do you market yourself? I know that a large percentage of the work comes from word of mouth, but how do you get started before that picks up steam?

Do you just cold call businesses? How do you choose businesses? What's your pitch?

I, personally, am not a graphic designer - but I'm looking to help my girlfriend and a few friends market themselves for a percentage of the take - and perhaps turn it into a full-time gig.

Any help would be great. Thanks.

Also, what does "I'm spamming" in my status mean?

Search "I'm Spamming" in the threads to find out. Also, I just go to forums, and throw up a post saying my stuff. After, they just come in, and I pick and choose.

[QUOTE=bounce]I, personally, am not a graphic designer - but I'm looking to help my girlfriend and a few friends market themselves for a percentage of the take - and perhaps turn it into a full-time gig. [QUOTE]

First, as a freelance marketer, let me tell you that if you don't have the educational background, there's no way you'll turn it into a full-time gig. Secondly, you can't do marketing work for a % of "the take." It doesn't work that way. You can charge per hour for your work (not recommended anymore) or per project depending on the work you'll be doing. You can't charge a percentage of what a designer would make, simply because they're doing all the design work, setting their own fees, etc. You'll never be able to prove that your marketing alone is what brought in a client. If that's your thinking, it won't work, and no one but your g/f and friends would hire you like that. If you simply want a %, the best bet would be to stick with referrals. Get business cards from the people you work for. Give out their business cards, with a "referred by [your name]" on the back. When someone hires them and gives that card, you'll get a % of the sale. I'm not trying to burst your bubble or anything, but that's the reality.

That being said, here are a few ways to help designers market themselves:

1. Make sure they have a professional looking (either online, offline or both) portfolio. A portfolio is the best ticket to striking interest from a prospective client. Here's is an article I wrote for the About Consulting / Freelance site on building portfolio pieces, good info if your friends are new to freelancing, and the second article is from a colleague of mine who runs the About Advertising site.
How to Build Your Portfolio With Little or No Experience
10 Tips to a Perfect Portfolio

2. Focus on free or very low-cost marketing efforts. I hate to see people jump too soon into advertising, when they can get the same result with less cost. Here is a basic article on the subject, and the second contains more specific things you can do to market services freely or cheaply. Aside from those articles, the official Guerrilla Marketing site (www.gmarketing.com) is an excellent resource.
Guerrilla Marketing 101
Guerrilla Marketing Tactics

3. There are also more specific things I like to recommend. Namely, business card referrals (like I mentioned to you above), web site promotion, and working on improving SEO.

And please, if you decide to go into freelance marketing full-time, make sure you understand the full implications of the kind of work. The Consulting / Freelance site can provide you with a lot of basic information if you take a look at Freelance Basics and the Freelance 101 category. And do get in touch if you have any specific questions about freelance marketing in the future. It's an exciting field, and of course the things you would learn would be beneficial to designers looking for help in promoting their work.

You should get a professional brochure made exhibiting your artists work, background, prices etc and send these off to local businesses. I assume this is primarly offline marketing you're looking into?

If you're looking to market this online then use overture/adwords it would pay off more than posting in forums, I imagine your markup is going to be pretty high and the keywords reasonably cheap.

On a side note, have you ever thought about attending arts/crafts fairs? Setting up a stall and exhibiting the work? That might work well. My brother does artwork (graffiti stuff) he had a market stall a while back and sold some work through that. Alot of it is down to word of mouth though, if you satisfy one customer they will go ahead and tell 5 of their friends and so forth.

I promote myself through related forums, and word of mouth will do the best job

To answer your first question, I'm not really a freelancer, but when necessary, I promote myself via forums

As for your second question, "I'm spamming" is someone's (the admin's I assume) joke for all the people who post one advertisment and leave (great idea if you ask me :lol

I also promote my site to FORUMS....i am registered in about 20 forums...so its easier...

A great way to get your foot in the door is to do some pro bono work for a visible non-profit in your community.

A portfolio is best.

I found that my freelance clients starting picking up after I starting getting popular on forums, and posting my work, getting great feedback, and showing my maturity. Word of mouth gets around.

Though, I think the BIGGEST cause to the drastic increase in clients was participating in contests over at sitepoint. I have already gained four clients from Sitepoint for my abilities in creating products geared towards the contest holder. Though, sometimes I dont win, there are plenty of times that people who browse the site will see the work, see your interaction with the holder, and seek you out to do business.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A PORTFOLIO. Even a simple directories will do. Just have some type of thing that they can look at. Since I am so busy, and I dont have time to develop my own personality portfolio, I've bought a flash script to make it some what decent to look at. PM me if you want to find out where you can buy it.

Good luck!

Bryan