by Jason Brick
You know that Fortune 500 companies have marketing plans. As freelance writers, so should we.
A handful of the writers I work with object to the idea of a marketing plan (or marketing, or plans).
The theory is that we artistic types are too spontaneous and creative to be constrained by such a left-brain activity.
But the truth is, the more spontaneous and creative you are, the more you need plans and systems to keep your writing business alive.
If you’re lucky enough to have come to writing from a business background, you already know how to do this. For all the other writers, here are six (reasonably) easy steps to creating a marketing plan to move your writing and your business in the right direction.
1. Run Your Numbers
Open your bookkeeping software or bank statements and find out exactly how much money comes in and how much you spend on business and personal expenses.
If you share your finances with a partner or spouse, you can divvy up expenses for this purpose – or count your partner’s income as one stream for your business and cover all the household costs.
Do this for the three most recent months, so the average will account for any outliers from a big assignment or one-time expense.
2. Set Your Goals
Look over your budget from step one. Where would you spend more money if you had it?
Would you pay off debt more aggressively, establish a vacation fund? How about setting free a few extra bucks for a meal out or some retail therapy?
Create a “goal budget” and find out how much more money you need to make to live that life. Go for a few reasonable changes here, and set a new goal once you achieve them. Aiming too high at first just sets you up for disappointment.
3. Analyze Your Output
Work out how much you make, on average, per assignment and divide the result of step two by that number. If you want an extra $500 a month, and write assignments for an average of $100 each, you need five more assignments per month to reach your goals.
Broken down like that, the new lifestyle you want seems (and is) more attainable. If your prices vary widely, break your output goals into sections. That $500 could come from a single $300 top magazine column and four $50 blog posts.
4. Study Your Marketing
Check your email history and other notes for the past few months and find out how many contacts you make with leads for each assignment you actually get. A “contact” includes any communication you have directly related to getting the gig.
Divide one by the other to figure out your ratio. If you get one gig for every 10 contacts, that’s a 10:1 ratio. Don’t include one-off check-ins with regular clients here. They’ll skew your numbers, and it’s better to estimate low and overperform than estimate high and get a nasty surprise.
It also helps protect you from a bad month if you know how much marketing you need to do to get the clients you need.
5. Establish Your Benchmarks
Time for some math. You can do it!
Take the results of steps three and four, and put them together. If you need six new assignments per month and have a 10:1 contact-to-assignment ratio, you need to make 60 new contacts per month to reach your income goals.
That’s 15 a week, or just three every work day. Make those three contacts a line item in your planner or to-do list.
6. Track Your Progress
This final step has two stages. First, make sure you get those contacts in every day. If you miss on one day, double your efforts until you’re back on quota.
This constant system of prospecting creates a continuous stream of new work. Second, check your numbers at the end of each month to confirm you set the right goals.
It might turn out your ratio was a bit low, and you need 70 contacts in the next month. You might have spruced up your website and only need 30.
No marketing plan is ever complete.
This system not only helps you stay on top of your marketing, but helps fight the temptation to procrastinate by giving you a clear to-do list of promotional tasks.
It really is that simple, no matter how much your buddy with the MBA would like to tell you otherwise. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though.
Do you have a marketing plan for your freelance business? If so, share how you do it.
Jason Brick is a freelance tramp who covers whatever topics clients will pay him to write about. He speaks about the business of writing and coaches new writers. See more of his articles about the writing business at brickcommajason.com.