[Store marketing flow*]
Most freelancers find advertising and marketing a bit mysterious,
confusing and/or disturbing in some way. For this reason, among others, they
try to avoid investing in them on a regular basis. In practice, advertising and
marketing are two different activities in terms of goal, method and measurement
with marketing being a much more practical, effective and affordable for most
entrepreneurs.
To explain, advertising is promoting short term sales. It involves exposing
a product or service to a specific audience and encouraging immediate action.
The customer motivation to buy may be limited time or supply or a notably low
price. The promotion, whether in audio or visual form, emphasizes the product
and the reason it is advisable to purchase now. Advertising generally involves
a short-term, often high, cost. The business owner measures the results by
comparing the estimated profit without advertising to the estimated profit
attained through promotion, deducting the advertising expense. For example, if
a new business advertises a grand opening, a successful advertising campaign
would lead to a much larger showup to the event and an increased volume of
sales on and around the opening. Likewise, if an established business
advertises a product whose inventory it wishes to reduce or eliminate, it is
possible to compare volume and profit before and during the campaign. Once the
promotion is over, the seller returns to business as usual.
By contrast, marketing emphasizes brand over item. Specifically, it aims
to create an identification between a service or product and the provider. As
extreme examples, Google, McDonalds and Pampers each invest great effort in
creating link between their name and their product, search engine, fast food
and diapers, respectively. Marketing campaigns generally lack short term
incentives to purchase, including low prices, but instead focus on a positive
attribute of the product or company. A name-recognition effort can take on a
variety of forms, including media adverts, sponsorship, signing, conferences
and talking to your neighbors. The sky is the limit but many forms of marketing
only involve investing time, not money. However, successful marketing does
involve consistent effort as the fruits of marketing are invisible and slow and
require multiple exposure. Simply put, it may take makes months or even years
to financially profit from the effort even though the name recognition campaign
is actually effective. Large companies can afford to conduct measuring surveys
to ascertain the actual effectiveness. Most freelancers must have faith, a necessary
attribute in all respects for a freelancer. Successful marketing requires
long-term, directed action.
Advertising may be appropriate for some freelancers. For example, an
accountant or translator specializing in tax form preparation and translation
may try to reach companies and individuals in the first quarter of the year as
the tax filing deadline creates a time incentive to purchase their service.
Likewise, a recently established site designer or immigration document
specialist may be willing to sacrifice short-term profit in order to build a
portfolio and reputation. Service providers can reasonably provide large discounts
if they are especially efficient in their work. Of course, those entrepreneurs
finding themselves with no customers can choose to offer especially low prices
choosing to prefer low profit to no income. The issue is trying to raise the
prices to normal levels later but that is a long-term problem, a luxury for some
people. Thus, for entrepreneurs with short-term goals, an advertising campaign
may be worthwhile.
However, for most freelancers, including translators, marketing is the
better option in terms of effectiveness and cost. Since most independent
business people offer a product or service that is generally only occasionally
required, the best method for incoming business is the create a connection
between that service or product and the potential provider. To give an example,
a customer contacted me this week for a French to English translation after her
Masters advisor read a previous post of mine and labeled me as a potential
provider of translation should occasion arise. Even more, marketing does not
necessarily involve significant financial outlays. For example, business group
zoom meetups and telling your hairdresser what your profession are free of
charge as are posts in Facebook and other social media. One graphologist posted
a simple business sign in her garden and regularly profited from opportunity
clients. Marketing does require time to think, create and act. For better or
worse, many freelancers had and have far too much free time in the last two
years. Marketing is a way of converting that surplus into a future financial
profit.
As a trigger to thinking about marketing, I would suggest considering
the following questions:
1. Do
people in my local community know what I do?
2. When
I enter my name in Google search, do my profession and contact details appear?
3. Have
other people in my profession in my country and abroad, if relevant, heard of
me?
4. Have
my potential customers ever heard of me?
If the answer to any of the questions is negative, it is time to
actively think about marketing and then begin an ongoing effort to change the
answer to positive. The results probably will not occur immediately. However,
in an especially volatile market, all entrepreneurs must consider the question
of where they want to be two years from now, keeping in mind that the failure to act
is an action in itself. Despite their connotations and the lack of comfort they
create for independents, advertising and, even more so, marketing are important
options for all freelancers building a long-term future in their business.
* Picture captions open up the Internet to the blind.
Picture credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/megan_rexazin-6742250/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4156934">Megan Rexazin</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4156934">Pixabay</a>
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