Study: Self-employed Professionals Effective Marketing
A study of more than 1,600 self-employed professionals and small business owners performed by FreshBooks Cloud Accounting discovered what the most effective marketing strategies were.
The following are what these self-employed professionals called “highly effective” marketing strategies:
- Drum up new business through personal and client referrals
- Build a referral partner network
- Educate, instruct or speak
- Make use of content marketing
Based on the study, 85% of those interviewed agreed that the most challenging part is “business development”.
This is the kind of practical guidance that can be extremely useful in deciding how to promote your services. However, these are strategies tailored for top tier marketing. Listed below is what I’ve noticed are the most effective methods that every self-employed person should have a look at.
- Get in contact with people you already know to find out if they would like to do business with you or can refer other people they know.
- Follow up with your network of potential clients, and possible referral sources consistently.
- Determine who would be great referral partners for you and get in touch with these people intentionally.
- Make sure you are doing in person and online networking for the purpose of expanding your contact list so they can refer business to you.
- Speak, educate, or instruct groups of prospective clients or prospective referral sources in person or online through a webinar, chat sessions, etc.
- Create valuable content on a regular basis for your blog or write guest posts on other blogs.
- Write a list of tips, white paper, ebook, special report, or audio/video content to provide for your email list.
Pro Tip:
Network online using LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s emphasis on professionals makes it a great place to produce some quality leads. Be certain that your profile is very good, and market your blog content on LinkedIn frequently. Build relationships with authors if you find their content helpful by telling them it was a great piece and be specific about what you liked about it.