Your goal as a freelancer is trying to convince a potential client to respond to your initial message, or trying to close the deal after an interview. If you are out there trying to book you some gigs and want to stay on top of your game at landing jobs consistently even with some competition from other freelancers, you will have to be smarter. You ask, how? Check this out:
1. Remove the risk
There’s a reason a lot of products offer some type of satisfaction guarantee. People worry about the worst-case scenario a lot during purchasing decisions, and they feel more comfortable buying if you remove the risk. In your freelance job search, you’ll also close more deals if you make yourself seem less risky to potential buyers (clients).
Start by offering a clear, fair revision policy: A potential client is likely to be thinking, “what happens if the work they deliver is not what I hoped for? ”It’s nothing personal; it’s just human nature for them to worry about the worst-case scenario. You can put their mind at ease by having a clear revision policy that makes them feel safe and protected from this type of risk. Of course, you should protect yourself as well and have some type of guidelines/limitations on how many revisions are included.
Show clients past results whenever possible : There’s no quicker way to put a client’s mind at ease than showing them great results you delivered for similar businesses (that last part is important – the more similar, the better). Invest time into organizing your past results into a freelance portfolio, a case study so you’re ready to highlight these accomplishments.
2. Be as specific as possible
Precise numbers and facts are more convincing and more likely to be trusted. So as a freelance job seeker, you can use this to your advantage by highlighting specific accomplishments, data and real results when selling yourself to potential clients on your online profiles, proposals, and in your interview questions.
To get started, gather data and metrics from your past work. Any metrics related to your specific field of work (for example, if you’re a web server admin, your metrics might be server response time and website downtime)
3. Make it about them, not you
Start with your proposals instead of talking about yourself and giving clients a long history of your freelance career, try immediately talking about their specific problems and needs from the job posting, and then highlighting how your experience and past results will help you on this particular job.
Then on your profile, take the same approach write about how you can help your ideal type of client make more money or save more money (or reach whatever goal they’re typically looking to achieve when they work with you).
By using these marketing principles, you’ll receive more interviews and more job offers as a freelancer, so you can boost your earnings without having to send more proposals.