Choosing the Best Marketing Approach

Many of the freelance editors I know love running their own businesses … except for the marketing part. They love editing, they love their clients, they love the freedom and flexibility of freelancing. But then … they have to get clients. They have to market.

And many (probably most) of them hate it. So they put off doing it, or rely on others (such as freelance platforms like Upwork and Fiverr) to do their marketing for them. The result is an inconsistent (or nonexistent) cash flow because they’re just not landing enough clients who are paying reasonable rates.

Marketing can be hard mentally and emotionally. You can feel like you’re doing a lot of work without a lot of reward. And you can easily feel overwhelmed by all the things you could/should be doing to spread the word about your work.

It’s common for people to suggest that as an editor you should be prominent on social media. But maybe you dislike social media and don’t like the public spectacle. Maybe you hate how you feel when you spend the whole day refreshing Facebook and looking for likes.

If any particular marketing approach makes you feel sick to your stomach, then skip it. In other words, take this as permission not to use social media marketing! It’s A-OK to decide it’s not for you.

You’ll have to do something, of course, since people won’t know you’re an editor through the wonders of mental telepathy, but it doesn’t have to be social media. It could be content marketing or SEO or something else, or a variety of something elses.

If you’re feeling that you’re spinning your wheels, reframe your efforts as “testing.” In other words, instead of spending six months posting daily to Pinterest with not even a glimmer of a connection to an author, give yourself a month to try a marketing effort. Then see if it has resulted in anything promising – an inquiry about your rates, an invitation to talk to a group of writers, etc. If not, move on to something with more promise.

This testing technique can also be used if you feel like you could/should be doing fifty different marketing approaches. Instead of trying to do everything, make a list of possibilities that appeal to you, then pick one or two and concentrate on them for a month. What happens? Are you getting any signs of interest? If not, move on to something else. Do you hate doing it? If so, move on to something else.

Marketing doesn’t have to make you miserable – you can protect your mental and emotional health by choosing the type of marketing that aligns most with how you like to interact with the world.