How to survive in the freelance market – Part 3

This is the third of a six part series of articles from two ELT professionals who have successfully done just that: Mike Hogan and Bethany Cagnol. Here, they share advice on mapping out a marketing strategy.

Following on from our previous articles, once you’ve thought about your income and expenditure needs, defined your services, carried out a SWOT analysis and researched your potential market and competitors, the next step is thinking about how to market and sell your training to clients and differentiating yourself from similar organizations.

Where to start?

Your business strategy is essential and also provides your starting point. You need to know where you are now, where you’re going and why. Your marketing strategy must then match your business strategy.

The Market Mix 4 Ps is a good starting point. Get ready to define your Product, and in the case of ELT, your service. The place, promotion and price are the other three Ps. When thinking of the place, consider whether you’ll offer your services virtually or face-to-face, and whether you’ll offer them from home, a hired training room, the clients’ premises or elsewhere. Promotion refers to the channels you’ll use to communicate what you have to offer; researching your market and potential competitors can help you define these. With regard to price, you’ll need to think of the value of what you’re offering in its own right, but also relative to current market conditions, your competitors, and other factors.

Getting noticed

There’s no single ‘best’ way to market your ELT services. First, think about your prospective clientele and where they turn for information. If they read industry-specific journals, why not submit an article that draws on your expertise in this field. If they go to conferences, consider presenting some research or running a workshop. Conferences can also be useful in developing contacts with your peers, which in turn can lead to future project collaboration. Professional-looking business cards are essential, as is an online presence. Do you have a website or at least an online profile? Can you or your services be easily found online when doing a search for your area? How are you building a brand around your name? It’s not something which can be done overnight and requires patience and a step-by-step approach and a great deal of patience.

Building relationships and serving needs

Marketing is all about serving needs. Serving your customers’ needs requires skills in building relationships, finding out what they need and considering how you can meet those needs. You might even be able to create a need that a client was previously unaware of, which you, of course, can fill.

When you meet with potential clients, focus on listening to what’s important for them, rather than trying to push your services. When you truly understand their needs, you’ll be better positioned to package what you can offer in a more suitable way.

Get involved in ‘the business’ of language teaching. If you’re a freelancer, you’re the service provider and the school/client is your customer. Treat them like one. Care for them. Remember: they aren’t obliged to fill your schedule.

Sales

Sales and Marketing are inextricably linked. It’s essential that you’re comfortable presenting, negotiating, and talking about prices and money if you’re going to be selling your services. This doesn’t come easy to many, but you can actually find tips in coursebooks in the sales, marketing, presentations and negotiations sections. Remember all those roleplays you’ve done with your learners? Apply the same principles to your meetings with clients. With practice, it gets easier!

If a potential client schedules a meeting with you, they’re probably also talking to your competitors. Don’t wait to reply to that email or draft that offer until tomorrow. Do it today. Complacency and overconfidence can be deadly. And even if your client is a long-standing and satisfied one, always assume that could change at any moment. Fend off competitors by continuing to offer tailored, top-quality services that differentiate you from the rest.

Sometimes you may get a training contract with more training than you can deliver. This is when it becomes necessary to hire / subcontract other freelancers to work on your behalf. Remember they’ll be delivering the training under your name and your brand, and this can be pretty scary at first. So the importance of continued quality control in such instances can’t be stressed enough.

Finally, a marketing plan is always in a state of flux. You need to monitor it regularly and adjust as necessary to react to changing market conditions and stay aligned with your overall strategy.

This article first appeared in the January 2014 edition of the Teaching Adults Newsletter – a round-up of news, interviews and resources specifically for teachers of adults. If you teach adults, subscribe to the Teaching Adults Newsletter now.

© Mike Hogan and Bethany Cagnol, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the authors with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.