Treasa Edmond: 0:00

Welcome back to the Boss Responses podcast. I love today's question. It's all about how to know which advice you should pay attention to when you're looking to market yourself as a freelancer. You're going to want to listen to this entire episode because it is packed with great information. All right, let's go ahead and get into it. If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, teresa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asked a question I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays, we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embrace their role as the boss of their business.

Treasa Edmond: 1:04

Welcome to Boss Responses. We are back for day three with Jamie Brindle and Jamie. The question today is from Priya in Toronto, canada. Priya says I'm working on marketing myself better as a freelancer, but there's so much advice out there that it feels overwhelming. I hear you, priya. Should I focus on social media, cold outreach, seo or something else? If you were starting from scratch today, what would be the top three things you'd do to market yourself? I love the specificity of this question.

Jamie Brindle: 1:41

That's a good one. Let's get into it. Let's work through this one Again. I think we've referenced this at some point this week, but the point of social media and the internet seems to be to overcomplicate things, thereby feeding the almighty algorithm. But ultimately, let's get to basics here. Business is the exchange of money for solutions, and the bigger the solution, the more you get to charge for it. But also, the more specific the solution, the more you get to charge for it. And I'm getting to a point here. Give me some grace, but we are talking about marketing right now.

Jamie Brindle: 2:16

Whether you realize it or not, oftentimes when a freelancer tells me they're having difficulty finding leads, my first question is not well, what platforms are you on? Or are you doing email outreach? Or what are you doing with cold messaging? Or what job markets are you on? I never ask those questions. My first question is well, what problem do you solve, for whom? And usually the answer to that question from this person who's having difficulty finding leads is very broad. It's oh, I make logos for companies, or oh, I write stuff for people that need stuff written, and immediately we have identified their problem. So that would be the first thing that I have to say on this subject is that, when it comes to marketing, if you don't have a specific enough solution for a specific enough person, you're in trouble, because, ultimately, what you need to do to have successful marketing is to have a target to hit, and if the target's too big, then you can't get specific enough about your marketing to be effective. So you can't get detailed enough when answering these two questions. Again, the more specific the problem is, the more you get charged for it, because somebody's coming to you saying man, I really need to figure this out. Nobody seems to have the answer. I've got a bunch of generalists over here, but nobody that's like an expert in solving this particular problem, until I found you. How much money do you need for me to make this thing work? That's what you're going for, but getting that specificity in your solution and your target market then allows you to take that message and put it in the right places on the internet.

Jamie Brindle: 4:01

Now we can talk about emails and social media and job markets. What have you? These people are in these eight LinkedIn groups or these people are in these four subreddits all the time. These people are following these 25 creators on Instagram and they're always in the comment sections reading right. So that's the next step. Is you go make yourself available there? Now notice I'm not talking about content. Step is you go make yourself available there Now, notice I'm not talking about content creation yet. Just make yourself available to be helpful. You're there to provide value.

Jamie Brindle: 4:33

You're in that Facebook group to become the go-to person for this problem. And guess what, if a Facebook group has 20,000 people in it and a new person comes in and says oof, I'm really having issues with this one thing. Watch, after six months, eight months of being really proactive in that group, watch them go. Oh, you need to talk to Priya about this. Everybody starts commenting on it. Priya, priya tag Priya, priya Priya's got the answer for this one.

Jamie Brindle: 4:58

And when that person with a budget to solve that problem goes to their, their group of peers and 19 of them recommend you a site unseen, that call is no longer a sales call. You're just talking budget and schedule. So that's where you want to be. Then you can think about content. I'll give you that one. Lastly, if they want to check you out, give them a home base to go. Get an understanding of the value branding results you bring.

Jamie Brindle: 5:23

I would say one last bit would be to activate your network once you've gotten that specificity in place about what problem you're solving for whom. Because I think a lot of freelancers who say, well, I don't have six or seven months to establish credibility on social media Like, okay, I can get specific, I'll figure that out this weekend, but I need to make money now. I can't make money in eight weeks, eight months. Well, take that solution and email every person, email every past colleague, every family member, every friend, every collaborator, and say, hey, I'm really excited I'm solving this problem for this person. I know that you've got a robust network of people that might benefit from this and I'd really appreciate it if you pass this around and that email becomes kind of a business card that your friends then get to pass on your behalf.

Treasa Edmond: 6:12

Yep, I think we're business soulmates, jamie. There's not much I would change about that at all, and I actually walk through this process with pretty much all of my coaching clients, because, even if they're already doing it well, there's always room for refinement. And one of the first things we do is their value proposition statement and that is narrowing down who their audience is and what service they're providing for them. So it's getting that really, really nailed down. And, like you, I see so many people going broad on this and I personally have always rebelled against niching. It's just something that just hit me the wrong way at some point and I never let go of it until the delightful Ed Gandia told me well, you're a ghostwriter, that means you've already niched down. You've just niched down horizontally instead of vertically, and yeah, that's accurate, yeah, yeah.

Treasa Edmond: 7:08

It's very accurate and it's not something I wanted to hear, but it changed my perspective a little bit. So there are different ways you can do it. So you can either get very, very specific on your service or very, very specific on your audience, or both. And I think the sweet spot is when you're specific on both, Because I don't ghostwrite for every person. I ghostwrite for a very specific type of person, and it's not necessarily in an industry, but it's a specific type of client. They have specific needs and outcomes that they want to see and I'm able to provide those for them. So I had to figure that out. And then messaging so you can figure out where they are, and I always say that that is three. That's three for me.

Treasa Edmond: 7:56

I think that focusing on your messaging is super important. You need to figure out now you know who you're working with and what you're doing for them. You need to figure out exactly what problems that's solving and it's not the problems you think it's solving. You need to actually talk to happy past clients and say when I did this thing for you, what problems did I solve for you? It's audience research. It doesn't take that much time. It almost always generates more work for you because they remember you're alive and it really helps you dial in that messaging and then you figure out where they're at and add value.

Treasa Edmond: 8:36

I don't ever go into a place and say, hey, my name's Teresa, I do book ghostwriting. I go in and I say, hey, my name's Teresa, I'm so excited to be here and to see what you're working on and how you're trying to grow your businesses. Then I offer value. I've done this for years and any clients that didn't come from referrals came from me offering value. I've not done an LOI. Have I ever done an LOI? I tried once and I'm pretty sure I broke out in hives. I don't like them. I am a relational person and I build my business through relationships and it works. It absolutely works.

Treasa Edmond: 9:11

The content creation, I think, is almost an afterthought, because if you are adding value, you're naturally getting ideas. For that's a really good question they ask. I bet that would make a great blog post or I could make a video about that. So when you're offering value, your content is creating itself. You're creating it where they are because you're already there with them and then you're able to say, hey, you know what? I just did a video about that the other day. Would you like to go watch that? So it's a circular process. That's what marketing is and that's what I would do.

Jamie Brindle: 9:43

Yeah, sales become a hell of a lot easier when you've got this kind of war chest of content that you've amassed over the years of answering people's questions for free and being valuable for free. That somebody talking to you about considering working with you is going to go well, shit, if this is what's on this side of the pay gate, what's on the other side? Like right, like what happens when I put money in this person's hands Like it's just so, if they're this valuable for free, my God, what's going to happen when we start working together? So sales become fairly, fairly simple too at that point.

Treasa Edmond: 10:20

And one of the kind of kickbacks I get when I recommend this to people is I don't want to offer everything. I don't want to offer all of my value for free in these communities, because then I've given everything away. No, you've told people what to do. You've not told them how to do it and most of the time it's not worth their time to figure out how. They would rather say obviously she knows what to do, go ahead and hire her. It's kind of the thing that the more value you offer, the more valuable people believe you are. It's just, hands down, the way it is.

Jamie Brindle: 10:56

Yeah, I think across the board. When you're talking about that particular complaint, which I have encountered as well, or that pushback, or just any pushback, even over niching down and things like that, it's okay, work this out from their side. So, like how you're the client, I recommend people going up work and hire somebody once or twice a quarter just to remind themselves what it's like to be the client, because there is suddenly, the world looks a lot different. But think about the last time you encountered somebody that told you online for free, exactly how to do something, exactly how to get a certain result and this person had been working for years to acquire this insight Was your immediate thought okay, I'm going to go perfect this new craft over the next eight or nine months, put this to work, I'm going to do all these.

Jamie Brindle: 11:44

Hang on, I'm going to find an extra two hours a day to do these things that this person's telling me, or did you think? I wonder how much that guy costs. I wonder if she's available to hire. That's the natural birth instinct and you might not be able to afford them. And then you have to kind of do some hybrid version of do it yourself and bringing on somebody, but I think universally, or more often than not, the first instinct is that's great. This person really seems to know what they're talking about. That looks like a lot of work. Would love to pay them to do it, and so I think, just think this one out from a client's perspective.

Treasa Edmond: 12:19

Yeah, and the more value you offer through that. It prompts people who could be clients who had never even thought about doing the thing, to think about doing the thing. And this has happened to me with ghostwriting thought leadership. I went into a group of CEOs and they're asking questions and one of them's, like I specialize in so many things. I'm a renaissance man. I don't know what to focus on in my thought leadership and I was able to say this is the exact process I go through with my clients to narrow down what their audience wants. And I just laid my process out there. I already had it written down. It wasn't any extra work for me. It took five minutes. I had another person come to me who ended up being a long-term, very lucrative client. We even ended up doing a book. Who said I'd never thought about doing it, but seeing your process made me understand that I actually do have value to add and now I want to do that. Can I work with you to do that? Yep, and we did so. It's value pays in spades.

Treasa Edmond: 13:21

And another thing I mentioned the audience research figuring out what problems you're solving for your audience. Don't tell your audience what you think they want to know, answer the questions they already have. Because when we this is one of the things I see my B2B clients doing wrong when we tell our clients or our prospective audience what we want them to know this is a great product, it does all of these things they don't care. They do not care. They want to know how it impacts their life, how it makes life easier for them, how it solves a problem for them. And if you're not doing one of those three things, then you're doing marketing wrong.

Jamie Brindle: 14:04

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean. And also, if we're talking in the context of social media, it's the same with the platforms that you're trying to gain reach on measure whether or not they want to push your content out by the same standard. Is this content valuable to us? Meaning, is this content helping us serve people? More ads? So that's the way. Social media, that's the point of the algorithm. So it's. Am I making content that is valuable to people, keeping them on the platform long enough, thereby being valuable to Facebook or LinkedIn or what have you? So there really is no end to the benefits that value is going to have on your business, putting valuable content out.

Treasa Edmond: 14:42

Now I want to jump on one of my soapboxes really quickly, because we've already gone pretty long on this question. When you are marketing wherever you're marketing, especially social media make sure you're marketing to the right audience. I see so many freelancers who are only marketing to other freelancers. Your clients really don't care. They really don't like seeing you complain about your clients. They have no inkling that your process matters at all. What they want to see is the results you're getting for other clients and when you talk about those, when you talk about your clients in a positive way, you talk about the problems you're solving. You're talking about how to make their life easier. That's what matters.

Treasa Edmond: 15:24

If you spend 20, 50, 80% of your time, or even all of your time, saying, hey, this is what I do, when I do this, that is only applicable to someone else who's doing what you're doing. It's not applicable to your clients. So be careful with that. I know it's easier to connect with other freelancers. It's easier to learn from other freelancers. Do that in a private forum, not the places you're marketing for your clients.

Jamie Brindle: 15:50

Yeah, yeah.

Treasa Edmond: 15:51

Make a second account. All right, that's day three.

Jamie Brindle: 16:01

Tomorrow, tomorrow we're looking at getting ghosted, you ever been ghosted, jamie, I'm sure I have.

Treasa Edmond: 16:04

Who hasn't? I have too? Yeah, All right. So tomorrow we're talking about getting ghosted, and what do we do when that happens? See you tomorrow.