When you hit a slow period in your business, it’s time to crank up the marketing machine. Here are 9 things you can do to market yourself when business is slow, and build some critical momentum when there’s not much client work going on.
1. Refresh Your Website
Your writer’s website is one of your most important marketing tools, so use this time to refresh it. If you don’t already have one, you can add an about page, or a blog. You can set up an email list if that’s something you’ve been wanting to do for awhile. Maybe tweak your content by trying a new headline or your visuals by installing a new theme.
Once you refresh your site, it’ll be easier to use for marketing to clients.
2. Make New Clips
You can also refresh your portfolio. Add new clips to your lovely revamped writer’s website, or on Medium if you are using that. Anywhere you have content, make sure your clips are relevant and up to date.
Again, you can use these new clips for marketing to clients.
3. Research New Prospects
Maybe it’s time to change your marketing strategy. If you’ve only been pitching to job boards, see if changing it up helps.
You can use your time to identify prospects to send cold emails or a letter of introduction to. You can work on your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
4. Catch Up on Training
Are you a course hoarder? (Raises hand…) This is a great time to pull one out of the vault and learn a new skill. Dedicate a bit of time to practicing something valuable.
Then you can impress clients with the hot new thang that you’ve learned!
5. Connect on Facebook or LinkedIn
Pick a platform you’ve been neglecting and start connecting more. Maybe that’s the business groups on Facebook, or contacts on LinkedIn. You could start publishing on LinkedIn if you haven’t done so yet.
Get in peoples’ faces in a polite, helpful way so that when they are thinking of writers, your name comes to mind.
6. Take New Pics and Use Them
A simple thing that can give you lots of mileage is taking new pictures of yourself and figuring out new ways to use them. If you have a social media strategy, post them on Instagram or your own blog. Maybe you want a new headshot, or a picture to put on your website profile header to promote your business.
Whatever it is, this is a great time to get some pictures and have some new graphic design that you can then put to use.
7. Get Ahead on Your Own Blog Posts
Write and schedule out some blog posts in advance on your own blog, so that when you are again swamped with client work (and you WILL be!), your blog will keep churning out client-attracting content.
You’re buying your future self some time. Great Scott, Marty!
8. Research Places to Guest Post and Pitch Them
Another thing you can do is look for places to guest post. Perhaps this is a marketing strategy you haven’t done very much of or it’s something that you really like to do. Maybe you have some decent clips, and now you want to get some by-lines.
Places that accept guest posts always need more content! They’re planning out two or three months in advance. Even if it’s December 25th, there’s still an editorial calendar.
9. Catch Up on Bookkeeping and Admin
Unless you’ve already done yourself the huge favor of hiring a VA, you can catch up on your bookkeeping and administrative tasks. Maybe you need to catch up on your email, or a bunch of follow ups.
Especially if it’s directly tied to landing work, finding new clients, or if it’s holding you back from moving ahead. You need the mental space. Now’s a great time to catch up on all that desk work or send some invoices.
So those are nine super quick tips on what you can do when it’s slow!
Copy Confidential
Have you heard of Copy Confidential? If not, I want you to go to copyconfidential.com and check it out.
This is my new course on how to write anything for any client. It’s really robust. We talk about the major writing skills that you’re going to need for both copywriting and content writing.
I’m also including 12 modules that go in depth into 12 different types of content that your clients want you to write. If that’s interesting to you and you’d like to learn more, check it out online at copyconfidential.com.
FYI, there is a bonus for my course Client Bound. If you enroll in Copy Confidential, you get Client Bound for free! It’s pretty cool. I hope you check it out.
