#119: The 6 Most Effective Marketing Tools for Freelancers in 2017

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Thank you for joining me for episode 119 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. You can find details show notes to this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 1 19. If you are in the process of planning your marketing efforts for the year or if you've recently gone through this but are open to maybe taking another look and refining what you've come up with, then, then you don't want to miss this episode. I've brought back my good friend and colleague Elise Bennen from marketing-mentor.com to talk about how you can market your business more effectively in 2017. And obviously this is a topic we've touched on many, many times in this podcast. But I really love how Elise has broken this down into six tools or strategies you should be focusing on. And it's not just the fact that she's narrowed it down to 6. I love how she's broken it down or grouped them into, into two groups. The first group is or these are things you should deploy or refine and everyone should do. And then the second group are things that you should do on a regular basis. So one is, you know, elements that you need to have in place. And the second group is things, three things you should be doing on a regular basis. I will tell you that the interviews with Elise and we've done here in the show are some of the most popular ones, some of the most popular episodes we have of the podcast. So if you've listened to some of them, you probably know what I'm talking about. Elise is just a great, great teacher and she really focuses on breaking things down, making things simpler for people. And this is no exception. I think this is going to be another very popular episode. It's a great discussion, so I hope you enjoy this. I think you're going to get a lot out of it. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Elise Bennett. Elise, welcome back to the show.

Thank you, Ed. Great to be here again.

It's always great to have you here. And you know, before we get to some of the stuff we're going to be talking about today, where are you calling from today?

I'm in Savannah for the winter. I love Savannah. For the winter.

Savannah, Georgia. So you're practically my neighbor.

Yes. We're not too far.

Four hours, but that's still, you know, closer than we typically are.

Absolutely.

That's fantastic. So tell us about what you're doing. I mean, like, what. You've done this a few times already. What's. What's this about moving?

Yeah, this is my third year spending the winter elsewhere is how I think about it. And this is this time I'm spending three months. And, you know, I mean, I consult with people and I create information products, and I can do that from anywhere. So I just bring my laptop and my phone and my fancy mic and. And my dog, and I can be anywhere. And lately, I've been loving Savannah because I'm just done with winter in New Jersey. That's.

Yes. I don't blame you. It's beautiful down there. Good for you. That's fantastic. One of the perks of having this kind of business, and unfortunately, so many of us don't take full advantage of it.

Yeah. And actually, after I chose Savannah, I realized, duh, there's a design school here, and I work with a lot of designers. So I have been establishing and nurturing a relationship with the Savannah College of Art and Design. And so I do a project here when I'm here. Also an interview series of designers, and the students come as the audience. And it's just a nice way of bringing working creative professionals and asking them questions about the business side of their business.

Oh, that's fantastic. So that was an accident. That wasn't by design.

It wasn't an accident, but it was also not by design. It just was a coincidence more than anything. And the chair of the graphic design department, Jason Fox is his name, was very warm and welcoming when I reached out the first time. And he and I have come up with some things that we can do together.

So by the end of three months, you will definitely be saying you all. I just might, y'.

All.

Awesome. Well, I know that many of my listeners are familiar with you and your work, but for those who are not, why don't you give us kind of a brief summary of who you are, what you do, whom you typically serve.

Sure. So my consulting practice is called Marketing Mentor, and it's at marketing-mentor.com and I coach creative professionals, designers, copywriters, illustrators, photographers, one on one, for the most part, on the business side of their business. And that involves a combination of marketing and pricing, usually in any client relation, issues that come up. And then I have an online Store also where I sell marketing tools and sample proposals and something called the Pick a Niche Kit, which I think we've talked about once before. And just things that help facilitate the business side of the business.

Love it. You've been doing this for a long time.

Yes.

You know, just reminds me of the first time I met you. I was a total newbie, and by then you had already been doing this for a long time. So you started when you were 12 and it's been 20 years, so whatever. You're in your 30s. All right, so let's, let's talk about today's topic. I'm just anxious to dive in because this is obviously my, my favorite topic here in the podcast, and that's marketing. And we're now in goal setting season. Right. And a lot of freelancers, part of their goals typically involve the type of marketing they're going to do, the kind of marketing, the frequency, all that. And what I find is everyone has really good intentions, but sometime by February, many of us have kind of reverted back to what we used to do, which is whatever, Haphazard. Some work, some doesn't. Inconsistent. Why is this such a problem? Why do so many of us find it so difficult to be strategic and consistent with our own marketing?

Well, there are lots of different answers to that question. I'll touch on a couple that I think are the most important. One is first, that we're not trained to do it in the first place. And most creative professionals don't like it. They don't realize, actually that they can bring their creativity and their enthusiasm for their work to the marketing of their business. And therefore they see it as something that they kind of have to do but don't really want to do. And I think that often comes through. And so as soon as you get busy, it gets dropped, essentially. And then a corollary to that is the fact that it really has to become a habit. And it takes a while for something to become a habit. And most people do not commit to doing it long enough for it to become a habit. And thirdly, there are so many different marketing tools we can be using, and most people try a bunch of them, but don't do them in a way that they're working together and, and therefore it's easy to get really distracted and not even know what actually works for your business. And so often what I advise, besides making it a habit, is choosing just a few marketing tools, the right ones, essentially, and using those and not even worrying about the rest of them.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, this is a big topic. I don't really want to get into the habits thing too much. I think we could have a totally different episode just on that. But let's focus on the. The tools in the mindset. And you talk a lot about connecting the dots, so let's start there. What do you mean by connecting the dots with your marketing?

Yeah, this was something that was pointed out to me recently, actually, that I help people connect the dots. And then I suddenly started to see that that's what most people are not doing, is connecting the dots. So hold on. What that means is, first of all, having the right mindset and then choosing the right market and using the right marketing tools for that market so that you are in their face or in their inbox or in front of them at exactly the right time. And if all of those pieces are not happening together, then you're not connecting the dots. And, and it's very random. And the right people don't see your message at the right time. And that is when marketing actually works.

Oh, that's awesome. Let's. Let's use that as a framework for discussion. Then we got mindset. The right market and the right tools, the right of all three. So let's start with mindset. I mean, I talk about mindset. A lot of people talk about mindset. Is it just like a positive attitude towards marketing? What do you mean by mindset here?

No, there are three mindsets that I have identified that one needs to cultivate carefully. One is curiosity, meaning that you have to be curious about your market, about your prospects, about what they need, about what their challenges are, and not think you know everything and then bring that curiosity to your marketing. Meaning come with questions so that you can ask the right questions that shows that you understand what they need and what their challenges are. And if you think you have to demonstrate that you're the authority, then you may be wrong. So it's better to come with the questions that show that you know what you're talking about.

Okay, so curiosity is the first one. Tell me about that second one.

Generosity is the second one. And the mantra should be give, give, give. You want to give as much as you can of your ideas. I'm not talking about giving them away without getting paid for them, obviously. But I find that people are very kind of stingy and afraid that if they give too much away, then they're not going to get the work from the prospects. And I really find that the more generous you can be in your marketing, as in content marketing, for example, that the more you show what you know and it really just builds. And the people who can do it without you will, and that's fine. And the people who can't will want you to help them because they can see by your generosity how wonderful it is to work with you.

So true. So true, guys. I mean, we all want the clients who don't want to do this on their own or can't do it on their own all the time. You're better off giving that stuff away, giving your ideas away to a certain extent, many times it's right. It's not the deep how to, but it's the what and the why that you could talk about and you can give away. And that's often enough. But I know many people don't do it.

Exactly.

All right, so curiosity, generosity. What's the third mindset?

Gratitude. So just being grateful for what you learn when you ask your questions and people answer them. From being grateful for people who actually respond to you, even if it's to say, thanks, but we don't need your help or thanks, we'll keep this in mind. Any response actually is an indication that there's someone alive out there that is responding. And I think we need to be grateful for that instead of being disappointed that we didn't get a job out of them.

Oh, my gosh. I'd rather get a no than get no answer. And I tell you, let me just plug this in real quick because I think this is so important. I'm not seeing it as much as this at this stage, although I think it's critical, as you said, but I see this a lot. Once you've walked down a path with a prospect in, you know, proposal or quote, you've had several conversations and then they say no. I see it so frequently with a freelancer. Will just won't even respond to that email. And I think that is so unprofessional. You always need to be gracious and grateful no matter what, because people remember that. I tell you, I've worked with a lot of people or I haven't worked with them, I should say. I've corresponded, I've engaged with a lot of people who I was thinking about hiring them, but then something changed and I had to tell them no, and I got no response. I'm just shocked because believe me, those are the people I remember. And when things change in my end, I will not be calling them back.

Right. And you just never know. I think people take no in too black and white of a way because no probably means not the right fit, not right now, not the right situation, whatever. But if you just keep the conversation going. And again, with gratitude, with curiosity, and with generosity. So keep sending people information, keep letting them know that you're thinking of them, that really all comes back around eventually.

Before we get to the next item, which is the right market. While we're still talking about mindset, I want to know what your take is on the introverts excuse. Well, I'm introverted or that's just not my thing, or I'm just not good at that. So what's your response when people tell you that?

Well, I feel like that. Okay, that's fine. But that's not really what we're talking about. The mindset of curiosity, generosity and gratitude should override the label you put on yourself. Or just back to the idea that people don't have a lot of training or practice at some of this stuff and then they put this label on themselves. Oh, it's because I'm shy. Oh, it's because I'm not good at it. With practice, at all of these marketing tools that we're going to talk about, you get better and you do it with just a positive expression. And people really respond to that. So I would say put that aside if you can.

It's great advice. Okay, so the right mindset, we just covered that. Let's talk about the right market. So what does that mean? And how do you pick the right market?

Yeah, so we did a whole podcast on this, as I recall, on picking your niche. And I know you've probably done more than just that one because it's such an important topic. Because again, even if you've got all the right marketing tools, and I see this a lot, that people, their website looks awesome, their LinkedIn profile is good, but they don't know who they're focused on and therefore nothing actually comes out of it. And so I think that if you can choose one or two or at the most three markets of whether it's industry or types of work that you're interested in that you're good at, where you have connections and you focus your message on those people and those markets, it will make the connecting the dots that much easier. You just can't be everything to everyone.

And we'll make sure to connect to that episode in the show Notes. You're right. That was a great and very popular episode. So make sure to check that out. It's very nicely complements what we're talking about here today very well. Excellent you're right. In fact, I'm working with someone right now and one of the things he said is, you know, when we're talking about target markets, he said, well, I, I target mid sized to large companies. I said, you know, that's just not specific enough. I don't believe in getting extremely granular, especially when you're pivoting or at first when you're launching. But at any point in your journey, you should have more specificity than that.

Absolutely.

All right, so mindset the right market and let's talk about the right tools. You've actually identified six tools that are working really well and you feel freelancers should deploy. Let's talk about each of those one by one.

Yeah. So there are three to put in place and three to do religiously. The three to put in place. I'll just give you the overview of them first and then we can talk about each one. The first one is your elevator pitch, the second one is your LinkedIn profile, and the third is your marketing smart website. And they're connected. Right, because they all have to convey the same message to the right market. So your elevator pitch is what you say in answer to the question, what do you do? And you have to make sure that yours shows how you're perfect for your ideal clients and different from your competitors so that your ideal clients, when they hear what you say or land on your marketing smart website, say, basically, this is exactly who we need.

Yep, Makes sense. And I know this is an area that we all have trouble with. Right. I think it takes some practice, wouldn't you say? This is not the kind of thing you can wing when somebody happens to ask you that.

Absolutely. You can't wing it. In fact, I think your elevator pitch should be constantly evolving and changing and it should be different for each person that you say it to. Because based on the curiosity you've used to ask questions about who they are and what they do, you use that to then give them generosity. The elevator pitch. That is exactly for them.

Oh, I like that. To tailor the message based on what they probably already know or understand or don't understand yet.

Yes. And I just want to emphasize that little idea there, which really I just kind of connected the dots to myself just now, which is, is that your elevator pitch is something that you want to be generous with too, Because I think that people who are shy or aren't good at quote unquote, selling themselves do themselves a disservice when they don't use generosity with their elevator pitch and are enthusiastic about saying, here's what I do.

So generosity in terms of openness and explaining.

Exactly.

Okay, gotcha. All right. Yeah, I like that. Way to connect the dots. You are good at this. All right, so elevator pitch. LinkedIn.

Right. So your LinkedIn profile should also mirror your elevator pitch. It should have a consistent message and you use it to support that message. But you also want to make sure that all the people who are using LinkedIn as a search engine find you for the thing that you do best or the market that you do it best for. Those are your ideal clients. So you want to make sure that there's a connection between what they see and what someone would hear when you give them your elevator pitch.

Yeah, it's become, I would say in the last two or three years, I'm getting more and more feedback from freelancers saying they're finding me on LinkedIn, they're finding me on LinkedIn. I just didn't hear that three years before that.

Yeah, no, it's a professional search engine, basically.

Yeah, it really is. Okay. And then that leads naturally to then your website. But you had a term for it.

Actually before we get there, did you know that you can export your LinkedIn connections out of LinkedIn and get all of the email addresses of your contacts? No, this is something I just, just recently discovered. And so I did a little 3 minute explainer video about it and I sent it out on my quick tip today. And so we can post that also on the show notes because it's the most amazing thing. I mean, that is your best contact list and you can download the email addresses for those people now.

I wonder what it shows you. Does it show you the email address that's tied to their LinkedIn account? Do you know?

I think so, yeah.

That's fantastic, man. What a gold mine. Yeah, what a gold mine. That's awesome. LinkedIn just becomes more and more of. It's becoming just an indispensable tool.

Yeah.

All right, and then your website, you had a specific term for the type of website.

Marketing smart website.

Marketing smart website.

I like it. So a marketing smart website is a. Marketing is a website that is not about you. Basically it's about the needs of your prospects. And it uses the language and the word you especially to speak directly to them, especially on your homepage. So again, when they land there, they say, this is exactly who I need.

So obviously you have to talk about yourself because I understand the wanting to build affinity and connect with them and making sure they understand that you know what their needs are. And understand their world. But how do you strike that balance between, you know, this is who I am and this is who you are?

I think the point is that you start with them and you respond to that with you and most people on their website. These anti marketing smart websites start with themselves, here's what I do, and then talk maybe a little bit about who they do it for. But I'm suggesting that you reverse that and focus first on what you help people with and who you help and then how you do it.

That slight shift right there makes such a world of difference, doesn't it?

It really does.

So it's not so much about 50, 50 copy about you and 50% copy about them. It's really just in the, the way you present the argument.

Exactly.

I love it. All right, so these are the three elements to put in place, to have in place. Elevator pitch, LinkedIn profile, marketing, smart website. Let's talk about the three tools that you should deploy or use religiously.

Right. And I want to focus on the fact that if you do, I want to focus on the fact that, you know, it's easy at this time of year to be. Have all the right intentions and say, all right, I'm really going to commit to it. But what you have to commit to is these three on an ongoing basis and not let it go. So networking, content marketing, and direct outreach. So networking, really, you know who your ideal clients are and you have to find them in real time and in person, if at all possible. And if that means you have to travel to the How Design conference in May in Chicago, because designers are the people, as a copywriter, for example, you want to partner with, then you go there, you put the budget aside, you save your money up, and you go there. Because it's just, it makes such a huge difference if you can meet people in person and make an impression with your real live person as opposed to your online presence.

So true, man. It really, there's just no comparison. It's like 10x, right? That phone connection.

Exactly.

All right, so networking. Now I'm curious as to. One of the things that I get asked about is though I get it and I understand who my target audience is, but I'm trying to find the best option. So, you know, if I, if I only had the budget for one conference or one or two of these a year, how do you make that decision, you know, when sometimes there's so many of them?

Well, I think you have to study the websites and you have to qualify. Call people on the phone who've been there before or the people who organize it and tell them what you're looking for. And don't be shy to tell people what you're looking for and you know, get advice from you or me if necessary, about whether or not it's the right event for you. And you want to make sure also that they're going to be addressing the issues that you help with. So for example, if health care is your market, then you want to make sure that there's marketing sessions or people speaking on marketing at the healthcare conference, or that it's even a healthcare marketing conference that will get you closer to your actual prospects.

You're right, because what I see a lot of people do is they make the mistake of, well, it's healthcare is my market. But then they go to a healthcare conference and there's very few marketers because it's really more about the technical side of it or maybe the it side of it. And there are very few potential direct contacts there.

Exactly. So it really does take time. I wouldn't make a rash decision about attending something unless it's happening immediately. And just, you know, get on the email newsletter list, join if you need to visit the website from time to time, find their LinkedIn group, ask questions, study it and do your research before you make a decision.

And again, these are, these would be out of town conferences many times, but let's not forget about the local opportunity that you might have and depending on where you live. But here again, right, you have to, can't be haphazard. So I see a lot of people say, well, I guess I need to network, so I guess I'll go to the chamber.

Right. You have to be more usually not the right place for most people.

Yeah, you have to be a lot more strategic than that.

Yeah.

All right, so this is not about doing this is about doing it right.

Exactly.

All right. Content marketing. So that's networking content marketing. Tell us about that.

So there are lots of different types of content marketing, but the place to start, in my opinion is putting people, your prospects, your market on Autodrip, which is an email marketing newsletter on a regular basis, monthly is my recommendation. You get their permission, you let them know that you're going to provide relevant content and it's the way you stay on their radar. So that again, the dots are connected. Because when they have a need, they think of you and have learned to trust you because they've been hearing from you for so long and have a vague sense or maybe even a clear sense of how you help and what you do.

One of the things that I found, Elise, is that people overthink the content marketing piece and they believe that they have to just really impress everyone with every issue, blow them away. That's not the point. The point is to put out good content, but really the point is to keep your name. Like you said, top of mind.

Yeah. And I find also that people come up with these huge ideas for really long email newsletters. And shorter is better. And if you have a long idea, break it up into a series of six different messages and there you've got a half a year's worth of content.

I love it. But you could even tell them ahead of time. Right. It's like this is a three part series. This is part one.

Exactly.

Okay. Content marketing and then direct outreach.

So that's just a euphemism for warm email prospecting.

I love it.

Right. Which, as you know, is choosing your best prospects and doing the necessary research to write the most personal customized message to them so that they are much more likely to actually respond to you. And the goal of direct outreach is to get a conversation going, not to get a job. It's just to get their attention, which is the thing that takes the longest. This is, this is what most people don't understand. Getting someone's attention is going to take a while. So there's a lot you have to do in terms of outreach and you have to do it several times. And you can't give up because they didn't respond to the first message that you sent out.

You're right. This is a long game, folks. Long game. And when I'm hearing this, I'm just taking notes here. At least one of the things that really stand out is the fact that this can get overwhelming very quickly. I mean, you've distilled it down to six things, but this is still can be overwhelming when you got client work and all these other things happening. You've done a really good job for the past few years of putting together a marketing plan to make this stuff actionable. It's one thing to know it, it's another thing to actually implement that. And I just want to give you like a quick plug here because I think what you're doing with this marketing plan is so awesome because it really fills that implementation gap that's out there. So why don't you take a couple of minutes and tell us about this plan that you've put out there.

Sure. So it's called the marketing blueprint. How to connect the dots of your marketing and it's the simplest marketing plan I've created so far. And that's why it's been whittled down to the three marketing tools that you have to have in place and the three that you do religiously. But there's more to the marketing blueprint than that. Also this new prospect tracker, which is a Google spreadsheet basically, which has embedded in it a four week marketing campaign. And it's very cool. And I created an explainer video to go along with that because it's kind of hard to describe, but the idea is that you only do like 10 or 20 people at a time over the course of four weeks. And in the prospect tracker, it has the warm email prospecting messages that you then tailor for each person. It also helps you track who has responded, who hasn't responded, how they responded, and it just kind of makes it easy to keep going. And that's one of the things that most people have trouble with. And we created this because I couldn't find a good CRM that I really liked and everyone was asking me. So my designer, Maureen Adamo, I'm giving her a plug here because she's really the brains behind this prospect tracker and she created it. And the idea is just to put all the information in one place so that you don't get overwhelmed and you don't forget where you were in the process.

Well, and to give you that, you know, those first few steps. Right. Because many times it's like, where do I start? And what I love about that spreadsheet is you have like copy chunks already kind of created and yeah, you're going to have to, you know, massage them and personalize them and all that. But it makes the starting part of this easier, right? In the doing, the everyday doing.

Yeah, that it's all right there already for you. And I think, you know, when everything is happening online, there's nothing tangible. And that's one of the things that makes it very difficult to do. It's like, wait, where was I? And who did I call and where are the notes? But the idea is to keep this all in one spreadsheet with a few different tabs.

So this is all part of your 2017 marketing plan, correct?

That's right. The marketing blueprint. And then it also has 54 excellent examples. This is my new series, so it's Excellent examples of LinkedIn profiles, email marketing newsletters, and marketing smart homepages. So all dovetailing with the six marketing tools that we talked about. And then I have three different categories. So there are six excellent examples of LinkedIn profiles of designers, six excellent examples of LinkedIn profiles of copywriters and content strategists, six excellent examples of LinkedIn profiles Of agency owners. And then the same for email marketing, newsletters and marketing smart homepages. Because I just find that we don't have good models of people doing it right. We have plenty of models of people doing it badly. But when you need to see how people are doing it right, it's not readily at hand. So that's why I created this new series and it's part of the marketing blueprint and it's got video and it's got PDF and it's actually very cool.

It is very cool. Guys, you know that I am, I rarely promote other people's stuff. You know, there's like three people out there and Lisa's one of them who I trust enough to just put my, my stamp of approval on when, when they, when they create stuff. And this is one of them. This is a great time of year to grab this. You got a just incredible deal. I think you're just giving this away, Elise. And if you want to learn more about it, guys, I'll have a link in the show notes, but you can go to smarterfreelancing.com Plan 2017 altogether Plan 2017 again, we'll include a a link in the show notes if you want to check it out. I am an affiliate of Elise, but. But I am an affiliate because I only promote products that I truly believe in and this is certainly one of them. So Elise, thanks for coming in today. This is a great discussion, step by step stuff I know my listeners love. So thanks for sharing this with us today.

My pleasure. Thank you for helping me spread the word.

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