How to Market Yourself as a Freelancer
If you want a freelance business that not only survives but thrives, you need to be consistently marketing. If you want to be able to charge rates that make your bank account happy, you need to be consistently marketing. If you want to be able to pick and choose your clients and projects, you need to be consistently marketing.

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How to Market Yourself as a Freelancer
Firs, let’s talk about why you must market yourself as a freelancer.
Here’s the funny thing about marketing: freelancers hate doing it.
We worry about sounding desperate or being sleazy or selling out. But if you don’t tell people your product or service exists, they can’t buy it.
You could have the perfect solution to all of their woes but if they don’t know the solution exists, they can’t buy it. Marketing = $$$$, right?
You aren’t putting a gun to anyone’s head. You aren’t forcing anyone to buy anything. But if you don’t let them know they have the option, you are forcing them to keep struggling.
What you are doing when you market your freelance business is letting people know they have an incredible shortcut out of their struggles and all it costs is money.

Most business owners would rather spend money to have an expert solve the problem than spend their own time and headache learning to solve it themselves (and failing the first several times.) Let them spend the money. Market yourself so they know you exist.
When a business owner has a problem, it’s just one of a dozen other things they have to deal with that day. They probably don’t have the time or energy to figure out what the best solution is or how to find someone to provide it.
They’re too busy and tired to make sure the person who has approached them is the best person to help them. I guarantee you that if you aren’t approaching the businesses who need your help, someone else is. And that someone else may not be as good as you are at what you do or as affordable or as lean or even as ethical.
As a freelancer, you have a lot of incredible things you offer your potential clients that other, bigger businesses don’t. For example:
- Low overhead – your rates might feel high to you but find out what a big business in your industry is charging for a consultant’s hour and you’ll feel a lot better
- Agile – you are always learning and improving your skills so you’re on top of the latest developments and trends
- Hands-on – your clients get to work directly with you, not go through seven layers of management
- Personable – you are a human being that your clients can relate to, not a faceless corporation. Don’t undervalue the appeal of that to clients who are probably small businesses themselves
- Ethical – apart from being a good person, your reputation as a freelancer is everything so you keep everything above board

Working with a freelancer like you is often better for a business than working with big business…but do you know what big businesses do that ensures they’re big and growing?
Yea, marketing. Lots and lots of marketing.
So if you want your freelance hustle to be a real business you need to do plenty of marketing too.
Assuming you provide a good service, the only difference between you right now and your freelance business being everything you hope and dream it will be is marketing.

If you can’t stomach the thought of marketing, being a freelancer might not be for you.
If you know you need to market but are struggling to execute, The Freelance Hustle Pitch Pack might be just what you need. In it, we lay out the exact pitch structures and methodology that has helped both of us grow multiple freelance businesses over the last 10+ years.
If you want to grow but aren’t sure how to, that’s ok. We can help you with that too.
Check out the resources at HerPaperRoute, which will help you map out your entire marketing calendar for the next year and enable you to check in along the way to ensure you’re on track.
The thing is: you don’t need our products in order to succeed. They are simply a shortcut to get the ball rolling so you don’t waste dozens or hundreds of hours on research about how to market instead of doing the marketing that will grow your business.
If you already have a system and pitch process that works for you, that’s fantastic. The most important thing is that you are marketing your business on a consistent basis.
How to Market Yourself as a Freelancer – 7 Ways To Promote yOur Freelance Business
Some of the most common and effective ways to market yourself as a freelancer are:
1. Have an Online Portfolio
You may think you can skip having an online portfolio but you can’t. In the same way you go online to look up a restaurant someone recommends, any potential client is going to look you up and will expect to find your online portfolio.
You can have your own website or host a portfolio on a site related to your industry, like Dribbble or Behance Either one is fine but having an online portfolio that potential clients can find is non-negotiable.
Just the other day I got on the phone with a potential client and they started with “I read everything in your online portfolio and love your work!” I love it when that happens because #salespitchdone. All I have to do is negotiate the details of our working relationship.
2. Be Visible Where Your Audience Is
Your audience is somewhere online and it’s a good idea for you to be there too. You don’t have to always be actively pitching but by being visible, you are becoming known and eventually trusted. This can lead to lots of work opportunities.
For example, if you are a writer who works with real estate agents, it’d be a good idea to be on real estate forums. You may also want to try to write for some of the brands they work with like HomeLight or Zillow.
Your audience may not contact you directly as a result of this visibility but when you pitch them, they’ll recognize your name. This recognition will result in a bit (or a lot) more trust than other pitches have, which will make your sales process easier.
3. Leverage Social Media
You need to be on social media. Just about everyone does. On the bright side, you don’t need to be on every single social media platform, just the ones that you love and the ones where jobs and leads might come from.
Your services will determine which social media platforms you need to be on. If you’re a photographer or designer, you should be on a visual platform like Instagram or Pinterest.
If you’re a writer, head to Twitter and Medium. If you’re not sure where you should be, find two or three people in your industry whose business you want to emulate and figure out which platforms they use.
I have found several writing gigs in Facebook groups and on Twitter. I do this by engaging consistently and following the brands with whom I would like to work.

4. Be the Expert in a Niche
A great way to market yourself is by being an expert in a niche. This works especially well in niches that require specialized knowledge. For example, marketing in the cannabis industry in the United States. Because local and federal laws impact the ways businesses can market legally, being a known expert helps. Businesses know they can trust a cannabis marketing expert to have industry-specific knowledge that most marketers, no matter how good, will lack.
It may feel limiting to choose a niche or two to specialize in. Do it anyway as this “limitation” can make your marketing much easier as you’ll be speaking to a specific audience. You’ll know the right lingo to use and how to speak to their problems (you know, the ones you solve.) Your audience will feel seen and you will have an easier time because you won’t have to convince them you understand their specific problems and can help.
5. Get Your Reviews
If you’re like most people, you don’t love singing your own praises. So don’t. Let your happy current and former clients sing them for you. All you have to do is make it easy for them to tell your potential clients how amazing working with you is and how happy they are with the results you provided.
You can do this by sending an email asking how they felt about working with you and how they feel about the results you got. When they write back with lots of praise, you can then go “gosh, that’s so kind of you to say. May I use that as a review on my website/portfolio?”
You can also ask for LinkedIn testimonials or reviews on your social media pages. If you have recorded video calls, you can ask for feedback on the call and then request permission to use the video snippet as a video testimonial.
The one caveat is to make sure you have your client’s permission before using their words. If a client is happy, they’re unlikely to say no but asking first is the right thing to do.

6. Ask for Referrals
Right after a client has given you a glowing review is a great time to ask for referrals. They may not know anyone offhand, but letting them know you loved working with them and would love working with anyone they recommend is smart. It allows you to share some love back and could lead to more work for you, now or in the future.
You should also ask your friends, family, colleagues, and former clients for referrals. If you don’t ask, they may assume you’re too busy for more work and won’t share your information. Some people offer finders fee to the people who refer them new business but you don’t have to do that. If you do decide to offer a finders fee, be sure to pay them out as fast as you say you will. Don’t make people wait for their money.
Remember: asking for referrals is not bugging anyone. It’s not begging for work. It’s letting the people who already love your work help the people they know have a chance at the amazing results you provide.
7. Pitch Your Services
Oh, you didn’t really think I’d somehow forget that you need to be pitching on a consistent basis, did you? Consistently pitching is one of the most effective ways to grow your freelance business. If you’d like to be earning more money, you need to be pitching.
I see the impact of pitching immediately. My calendar fills up with calls with potential clients right away and my bank account starts to fill up shortly thereafter. If I stop pitching for some reason, I can see it in my calendar and bank account pretty quickly.
If you want a steady income, you need to be steadily pitching. If you’re not sure how to pitch in a way that gets responses and clients, you can check out The Essential Freelance Pitch Pack we put together just for you.
If all of these methods for marketing yourself sound great but you’re not sure how to fit them all together in a way that is actionable on a day-to-day basis, consider the Freelance Marketing Plan & Goal Setting Workbook.
You don’t have to use our workbooks and packs to successfully market yourself. You can absolutely just implement the methods in this article and see a huge increase in your freelance business income.
Because people and businesses who don’t know you exist can’t hire you. If you don’t market to them, you are forcing them to hire someone else, possibly someone who is less skilled or less affordable or less agile or even less ethical than you.
By marketing your business to them, you’re giving them the knowledge that you exist and the option to hire you. No pressure, no guns-to-the-head.
You’re also giving your business the ability to grow and yourself the possibility of projects that you enjoy and enable you to grow.
How to Market Yourself as a Freelancer – Conclusion
Consistent marketing is the way to ensure your freelance hustle grows to be the business you want it to be.
So which of these seven ways to market your freelance business are you going to implement this week?

