Long gone are the days when companies, irrespective of their size, turned exclusively to large consultancy firms for marketing solutions. These days, individual marketing consultants are gaining popularity for a good reason. These consultants work as freelancers and cost only a fraction of what it does to hire reputed marketing consultancy firms. They tend to have different skill sets that allow them to delve deep into their marketing efforts to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time, their goals are to eliminate the shortcomings of business’ marketing strategies while improving their resilience.
All in all, becoming a freelance marketing consultant is a great way for aspiring marketing professionals to be their bosses and earn handsomely. However, you can’t expect to become a freelance marketing consultant overnight. It takes years of study and understanding of what marketing is and how it needs to be done. So, if you’re aiming to be a freelance marketing consultant in the future, read on.
Four steps to becoming a successful freelance marketing consultant
This post will take you through the four steps you must take to get your freelance marketing consultancy career started. So, without any further delay, let’s get started!
1. Educate yourself
Education has improved significantly in the last decade owing to online learning. Many marketing professionals have tasted success, but they don’t have any formal marketing or business degree. However, that doesn’t mean the professionals have any marketing know-how. Simply put, you don’t need a formal education to specialize in a particular field these days, but education is necessary at the end of the day.
So, the first step you have to take is to educate yourself on what’s needed to become a freelance marketing consultant. In terms of marketing alone, an aspiring consultant has to understand various aspects of marketing. For instance, if you want to be a digital marketing consultant, you’ll have to learn and master concepts and practices such as:
● Social media marketing
● Search engine optimization
● Content marketing
● Search engine marketing
● Video marketing
● Email marketing
A freelance marketing consultant also needs to possess strong communication and writing skills. These skills and marketing skillsets can be learned quite easily on multiple online learning platforms. However, to be a successful freelance marketing consultant, you can’t just rely on learning alone. You’ll also need to put what you know into practice for the learning to be effective.
2. Create a work profile and a website
Your marketing education may take months and years. However, once you’ve educated yourself enough to get started as a freelance marketing consultant, it’s time to set up your work profile along with a website. Sure, if you’re setting up your website and work profile without having served any clients so far, it might feel a little awkward. However, it would help if you remember the long-term goals of these actions – they’re all about making it easy to be found in the vast online world.
In terms of a work profile, there’s nowhere better to start than LinkedIn. It’s the platform of choice for consultants from all fields. While you’re filling up the details on your LinkedIn profile, remember to keep things professional. No client would like to work with someone whose LinkedIn profile appears unprofessional. You can find plenty of resources on the internet that will help you create a strong work profile.
In addition to a work profile, you should also spare some thought for creating a website. You can provide additional information about your services and your successes with past clients through your website. Ideally, a website gives you a lot of space to share your work statistics with past clients with prospective ones. Apart from creating a work profile and a website, it would help to put in some efforts on the social media front. These days, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are not just places to connect with your friends and family – they’re also promotional vehicles that you can use to your advantage.
3. Explore and find your niche
Once your work profile, website and social media profiles are all set up and operational, it’s time to find the right niche for yourself. Picking the correct place is imperative, as it’ll help you cement your reputation as a consultant in the long run. For instance, if you’re into mobile phones, you can offer your marketing consultancy services to companies that work in the mobile phone niche. Similarly, if you’re into sports, you can serve sports-focused companies.
Sure, when you’re just starting, you may not have a lot of options to pick from because of your inexperience. In such a scenario, you may have to work with companies from a diverse array of niches. However, once you identify the place that suits you based on your life’s interests and passions, you have to stick to it. You can still do an occasional project with a company from a different niche, but it’s important to work within a particular place for specialization’s sake consistently.
For instance, if you consistently work for sports-based companies and deliver with your marketing consultancy services, there’s a high chance that the most reputed companies in the niche will approach you. On the other hand, if there’s no consistency, the companies at the top of their respective slots won’t consider you a consultant who offers any degree of specialization.
4. Keep your network growing and your momentum building
Establishing yourself as a freelance marketing consultant is a difficult task today, as the competition has grown so fierce in recent times. However, if you commit and dedicate yourself to the cause, there’s no reason why it can’t be done. To keep growing without hitting any thick patch, you must keep your network growing. Put, the more people you’re connected to (both in real and virtual life), the more work you’ll get as a freelancer. We recommend setting up profiles across websites dedicated to freelancers such as Freelancer.com and Upwork.
To make sure that people across all your virtual networks find you, you should invest some time and effort into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well. These days, there are numerous SEO tools that you can use to identify the right keywords to use across all your profiles. Once you’ve identified the keywords, you should incorporate them meaningfully into your content. This will ensure that when your target audience uses those targeted keywords, they will likely find your page/profile/website on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Momentum is also an important thing for freelancers. Put, when you gather some momentum, i.e. your network is growing, and you’re getting more work with better pay, you must keep it going. For instance, if the word’s spreading fast about your marketing consultancy services, you can add to the momentum by writing blogs or making videos to share your expertise with the world. This will amplify your efforts and connect you with way more people than before.
Summing up
If you can get these four steps right, there’s every chance that you’ll shine as a freelance marketing consultant in the times to come. Before we end this article, we’d like to tell you about the importance of marketing consultant insurance.
If you ever fail to deliver the desired results to a client who’s overdemanding, there’s a chance the client may file for claims. In this situation, you could land up in a lot of legal trouble without professional indemnity insurance for marketing consultants.
Also, there’s always a risk of your marketing consultancy business being damaged by storms, fires, and other natural and artificial disasters. To keep the financial risks associated with these disasters at bay, you should also consider a marketing consultant business insurance. To know more about the different insurance policies available for freelance marketing consultants, visit this page.
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