Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads

Word of Mouth is The Go

• Enlist your family and friends to spread the word about your services
• Send out an email to everyone in your address book, announcing what you do, where you are and what you can offer
• Ask your satisfied clients for referrals
• Offer free consultations to new referrals
• Consider a referral or finders fee

Love Those Clients

• Get in touch with past and current clients when you have a new service to offer them
• Get in touch with past and current clients when you have completed a flagship project
• Start a newsletter
• Take advantage of every outgoing email by using your email signature as a marketing tool
• Send promotions for services with your invoices
• Ask your clients to place a credit on your work in web, video or print
• Make a calendar featuring your work for clients to put up in their offices to serve as a constant reminder
• Make a poster for your client to hang up on their office wall

Talk the Talk

• Go to industry events – conferences, association meetings, seminars
• Go to events in your client’s industry
• Sponsor a client event
• Join your local Chamber of Commerce and get involved
• Socialize and always have your card ready
• Do some pro-bono work for a charitable organization with industry links
• Get involved in social groups you’re connected to (church, school, university)
• Join an industry organization and get listed
• Contact people you used to work with and ask them to send you any run-off work they might have
• Offer to give a seminar to a local business group
• Practice an elevator speech about what you do and have it ready to go wherever you are
• Participate on online forums (using the forum signature line)
• Comment on blogs to draw people back to your freelance site

Promote Yourself

• Get t-shirts made with your URL
• Try location based Google Adwords
• Advertise in a niche magazine or trade publication e.g. a magazine just for cafes
• List yourself in business directories or the Yellow Pages
• Research sites your clients are visiting and buy advertising there
• Advertise in online directories
• Take out an ad out in a local newspaper
• Participate in a trade show
• Holidays are your friend! Send a clever holiday greeting to clients showing your work
• Promote a free first consulation service
• Have a gimmick that makes you stand out
• Give something away for free
• Place an advert in an industry newsletter
• Offer branded pens and paper at industry events

Be an Industry Expert

• Pitch an article to an industry publication
• Pitch a story to a blog or resource website
• Offer to speak at industry and networking events
• Start a blog and publicize it
• Submit tutorials or how-to’s to websites
• Get on the radio
• Write an eBook or Report for your target market and promote it online
• Enter your work into competitions and awards… and win !!!

Use the media

• Issue a press release about a story related to your services and try and get it into a local newspaper or magazine
• Pull a publicity friendly stunt (think Richard Branson)
• Run a contest which ties into your services

Job

• Keep an eye on online job boards
• Check out Craigs List for your city
• Keep an eye on offline job boards
• Pin up a little advert on boards in your local area or community

Brrr – It’s Cold in Here!

• Find out how you could improve a companies business and profits and cold call them with your pitch
• Mail promo postcards to potential clients
• Mail fun promotional items to potential clients (calendars, toys, posters etc)

Help Leads Find You

• Search-optimize your website and get Google traffic
• Have a follow up conversation with all potential leads
• Make sure you’re listed in the Yellow Pages and White Pages business section

Get in Bed with Local Business

• Contact your local internet service provider or printing house and offer them a commission if they refer work
• Establish contacts in larger agencies that can refer their run-off work
• Keep in touch with freelancers that will offer clients a complementary service to yours and throw each other work
• Create a local business directory and use it to get to know other business owners who might later need your services
• Cross promote with other businesses
• Ask if you can put your business cards or brochure in local stores
• Rent officespace shared with other businesses or freelancers

 

Boards