Marketing yourself can seem arrogant and unnecessary. Freelancers need to market themselves to find work. It can be intimidating and head-scratching if you don’t have marketing experience. That’s why we created this guide on how to market yourself as a freelancer. The goal is to help you present yourself in the best light and give you resources to help you find clients online.

How to market yourself as a freelancer

1. It’s all about how you present yourself.

Presentation matters immensely. It’s how you convince clients to trust you and that you’re the right person to help them complete their project. You need to appear professional, trustworthy, skilled, and knowledgeable. It might seem overwhelming, but it’s easier than it sounds. Here’s what you need to do:

Present yourself professionally: Use appropriate language, create a real structure to your self-introduction, reread your text, and ensure there are no spelling mistakes or typos. The more professional and direct your content appears the more people will stick around and read what you have to say.
Showcase your skills and knowledge: Talk about your skills, the tools you know how to use, and what you can do for clients. If you’re a graphic designer or video editor, provide examples of your work. If you’re a website developer, share websites you’ve built. This information is essential for clients. If they know they have the person with the right skills, they are more likely to order from you.
Use factual data, life experiences, and achievements: One of the best ways to convince clients that you are the right person to complete their project is to highlight your accomplishments and support everything you say with data. It’s what candidates often do during job interviews. You might not be in a job interview, but you’re interviewing nonetheless. Mention your achievements and how they helped businesses grow.

2. Build a powerful online presence

Since you’ll be looking for clients online, you need to be easy to find online. The stronger your online presence is, the more likely you are to find work and projects. There are many actions you can take to establish a strong online presence.

Create a professional portfolio or website: Highlight your best work, skills, projects you worked on, and client reviews. You don’t need to create something too sophisticated or complex. A more straightforward approach will be more efficient. Make it simple and focus on highlighting your work and experience.
Leverage social media channels: Social media is the perfect tool for reaching people with similar interests within specific niches. LinkedIn empowers you to find potential clients seamlessly. You can search for job titles, companies, jobs, and topics. Develop your presence and leverage the platform to connect with potential clients. Instagram, X, and TikTok are more visual platforms. But you can also leverage them to highlight your work.
Find more clients on freelance marketplace platforms: There are many freelance marketplace platforms where you can acquire new clients. The great thing about these platforms is that you can offer your services to clients actively searching for help completing their projects. We recommend using ComeUp as the platform offers many advantages, like a $1-only commission option, resources to help you sell more services, and some of the best customer service in the industry.

3. Networking and prospecting

It’s often an overlooked part of freelancing. Networking and looking for new clients is essential to finding a steady flow of clients. There are many ways to leverage networking and prospecting to reach new people and connect. We often think of prospecting as getting a client directly. But sometimes, it’s more about building a connection and making a sale over time.

Networking:

Use your network: Talk to friends, family, and others you know. Tell them you are a freelancer and that you’re looking for projects. People love to help, and word of mouth is powerful because people vouch for you.
Find industry events to attend: These events always seem unnecessary. But they are a great place to meet people you can work with. There are conferences, meetups, webinars, and other events. Being there shows you are a part of the industry.
Leverage online communities: Online communities are a great way to reach a specific audience. There are Facebook groups, Reddit pages, forums, and other places to reach people interested in your services. Carefully develop your sales pitch so you don’t just offer your services from the start.

Prospecting:

Find potential clients and offer them a solution to their problems: Prospecting is all about finding the right person, understanding their issues, and offering the ideal solution. If you can present yourself as the professional who can help and get the best results, you’re sure to be hired to work on the project.
Build a relationship, not just a sale: Sometimes, people are already working on different projects and have other priorities. Instead of prioritizing a sale, try to build a relationship with a future client. Talk about the issues their company is facing and how those could be addressed in the future. Let them know you’re available anytime they are.
Create the perfect pitch: Think of an elevator pitch and how you have little time to be incisive and convincing. You need to do the same when you pitch your services to clients. Create a clear pitch that is impactful and to the point. The better your pitch is, the more likely you will make a sale.
Reach out to potential customers: Once your pitch is ready, you can reach out to potential customers and offer your services. Try to be as personal as possible. Talk about them, their company, and what you could provide. There are countless places where you can find potential clients. Try a few different ones to test which works best for you.

4. Create content to show you are an expert in your area of expertise

Content has become such an important way to reach people nowadays. People who find you through your content are very likely to be inspired and impressed with your work. It’s the perfect way to showcase your expertise and offer your services.

Create a blog: Share your knowledge with people on a niche blog. It’s a great way to attract people to you based on different issues or challenges they are facing. Hook them in with the offer of helping them overcome their challenges and achieve their business goals.
Create visual content: Visual content is overtaking all other forms of content at an alarming rate on the internet. It can be difficult to leverage this type of content if you’re not particularly confident behind the camera. But it’s a great way to reach people. Generate short videos sharing tips, ideas, best practices, achievements, and other content that could be useful for users. Even if you don’t make a sale early on. Getting a large audience could help establish you as the voice of reason and help you find more clients in the long run.
Share free resources and helpful content: This is a great way to market yourself as a freelancer. Offer free resources to potentially interested people. It can be a preview of what you have to offer as a whole, so you will want to offer something useful. For example, if you’re an Excel or Google Sheets expert, you can offer a free template to create a report. If you’re a WordPress developer, you can offer a free WordPress theme.

5. Choose the best prices and the right target

Set your prices according to your skills. You can’t charge too much, but you also should never set low prices to ensure you get work. It’s not a sustainable way of finding projects to work on.

Choose the best prices for your services: You need to consider all the factors that go into setting a price for a service, like expertise, experience, skills, time, difficulty of the project, resources required, and so on. Here’s a handy guide to setting your prices on ComeUp. It has lots of insightful information to help you make this difficult decision.
Choose the right target: If your services are more expensive and high quality, you should target companies that are bigger and have a more significant budget. If you offer cheaper and simpler services, you can target smaller companies and people who have a smaller budget. It’s essential to consider this when you search for potential clients, as you may end up losing everyone’s time if you target the wrong people.

6. Choose the right strategy based on your skills

There are two different strategies when you sell your services online. You can either try to offer the most niche services possible to find and attract new clients with needs within that niche. Or you can do the opposite and offer more general services targeted at general audiences. Niche services usually cost more and require more expertise, while general services will usually be cheaper and be done by more people. You should pick the strategy that enables you to grow your revenue the most.

7. Get customer testimonials and social proof

Customer testimonials and social proof are the best ways to get more people to trust you and use your services. Make sure you ask people you helped to leave a review and share their positive experiences. Collect these reviews to highlight them in your portfolio and other areas. The more you showcase how you’ve helped customers, the more others will be curious about your skills.

How to market yourself as a freelancer on ComeUp?

ComeUp provides many different resources to help you sell your services online. We have articles in our FAQ to help you create and optimize your services. In addition, you can find our training videos on YouTube. We cover everything from how to market yourself as a freelancer to creating your first services and leveraging our algorithm to be ranked higher and potentially get more orders.

Optimize your seller profile

Having an attractive seller profile is essential to converting leads into clients. Leads often find you through your services, but many go through the profile page to see who they would be working with. Use a professional photo. Write a convincing introduction showing your experience and achievements. Share your skills in the dedicated section. Use the portfolio to showcase your best work and results. You can then share more about your work experience and education. The more you optimize your seller profile, the more leads will see you as a professional seller who can complete their projects.

Create the perfect service

Creating a service should require thought, time, and effort. This is the product you’re selling to clients. It needs to be convincing, clear, and to the point. Your service is your invoice, so it needs to encompass all the details about what it entails. Be as detailed as possible and structure your service so your client will go through it and be convinced it’s exactly what they need.

Share your services online and search for clients

One of the best ways to rank higher in our rankings is to sell your service. The more sales you get and complete, the higher your services will rank. We recommend looking for clients outside the platform and generating your first sales. Once you’ve completed a few sales, you’ll rank much higher in the rankings, and it will be easier to get sales organically.

Conclusion: How to market yourself as a freelancer

Now that you know how to market yourself as a freelancer, you can start marketing yourself to clients. It can be challenging at first if you’re not used to it. But it’s an essential skill to master as a freelancer to become successful. So put yourself out there, take risks, and highlight your skills, experience, and achievements to find many projects to work on. Use ComeUp to find more clients and grow your revenue, thanks to a $1-only commission option. Try ComeUp today!