How To Market Yourself (Without Marketing Yourself)

Happy Tuesday everyone! How are we almost at April already? Is this an April fools joke? Someone please kindly tell me where all the time has gone. Anyway, I'm excited to share this post with you all. Not just because it's a topic that you all chose for March (lol!) but because it's probably one of those things that always feels slightly scary to do whether you are just starting out or have been in business for a while. Wherever you might be on your creative journey, I think we can all agree that it isn't always easy to talk about ourselves. Fear, doubt, and impostor syndrome can work against us here which is why it's important to have a game plan for how you intend to market yourself and your services. 

To be clear, marketing is not an overnight process but a long-term commitment. It's about showing up for yourself consistently and implementing strategies that will get you out there in front of the clients that you want. Not every strategy will work for you and that's ok. Every business is different which is why it's important that you understand who you are, what you do, who you serve, and how to best serve them.

I'd like to mention that a few of the strategies and tips that I'll be sharing here are some of the most simple things you can do to market yourself without actually marketing yourself. It sounds weird but stick with me. By no means do we consider ourselves experts here but these are just a few of the strategies we've implemented in our business and have been nothing but beneficial. Let's get into it, shall we?

Your Portfolio

Do I even have to say it? Your work is literally your greatest marketing tool. It's the THING that will make clients gravitate towards you and if you have great work, they're bound to notice. The key thing here is to SHARE IT. You'd be surprised at how many people don't. How else are companies going to find you if your work isn't out there for them to see? At some point or another, a potential client will probably view your website (or online portfolio) to see more of your work, decide whether you'd be the right fit for a project, and hopefully inquire about your services. This is why it's super important to only be putting out the work that you'd like to be hired for so that potential clients aren't confused by what you do. When putting together your portfolio, consider sharing only your best work even if that means only 1-2 projects. Quality over quantity, you feel?

Now I'm sure you've all heard us rave about doing personal projects and for good reason. Many of our "fun shoots" have actually resulted in paid work and those projects are often the ones that potential clients refer to the most. When you're creating personal work, you're giving yourself the opportunity to create without restrictions and deadlines and that can be an amazing thing. It can help you develop your skills and hone down your "look". Finding your style takes time but when you do, it will only strengthen you as a creative professional and make it that much easier to market yourself.

Aside from building a beautiful website and sharing your unique portfolio, you'll want to make sure that you are making it as easy as possible for clients to understand who you are, what you do, and how they can connect with you. Kirsten of Alway Services wrote up some pretty awesome posts on this topic that you should check out if you haven't already: Is Your Website Really Serving You? and How To Professionally Reach Out To A Service-Based Business.

At the end of the day, your portfolio is the easiest marketing tool at your disposal and there's so much good that could come from being intentional with how you present your work.

Social Media

I won't get into the nitty gritty of social media because it's kind of a whole thing. However, I did write a post about it a while back so if you're interested, you can read that here: Social Media (Why You Need To Make It A Priority) I believe we all know the power of social media but a few of the ways that we've been able to use it as a marketing tool is by considering these next few points:

• how can I establish my identity and voice?

• what will my content strategy look like?

• how can I show a little bit of my personality while keeping it professional?

• what's the best way I can grow my audience and engage with potential clients?

• what platforms will be the most effective for my business?

Some of the answers to these questions will help you decide how to approach social media as a marketing tool. For us, it was easy to focus our energy on Instagram and Pinterest because of their image-based nature. A few of our passions include creating beautiful imagery for our clients, educating new freelance photographers, and having a lot of fun while doing so. Having established this about our brand, you'll often see us sharing a mix of our work, educational content, and fun BTS images to help build our audience.

We also know that the majority of the clients that we're trying to attract likely have a social media presence. For this reason, part of our marketing strategy is to make sure we are actively engaging with these brands on social. 

Sometimes you'll discover a random strategy that works for your business and that's what it's all about. Elle and I recently realized that we LOVE to recycle our content. Whether you've noticed or not, we actually share past work on our Instagram all the time. At first, we were simply doing this because we often aren't able to share new work right away since we typically wait for our clients to release the images on their platforms first. And then we thought... Why shouldn't we share past work that we're proud of? Often times as creatives, we get excited about sharing anything that's new and "burying" all the old work down on the feed. As we grow our audience (and the dumb IG algorithm continues to exist) it's very likely that our posts only really get viewed by a small percentage of our total audience. So in actuality, when we share our past work after it has been some time, it's most likely being shown to a new set of audience that may just be discovering us for the first time. And that's always a win-win-win in our eyes, haha!

Another incredibly easy way to market yourself while you sleep (literally) is to utilize Pinterest. We all know that this platform is a search engine (and a place to find visual references) but for some reason we don't ever think to pin our own content from our website and social media. By doing this, you'll ensure that anyone who comes across your work on Pinterest can actually click through directly to your site and view exactly what services you have to offer. Like I said before, you want to make it SO easy for potential clients to find and connect with you. We're hoping to share more about using Pinterest for your business but we've still got a lot to learn about it so we'll keep it brief for now. 

Community

I can't stress this one enough and I think you all know why. Community is SO important for many reasons. A strong network is essential for growing your brand and audience. By making meaningful connections with other creatives you can open up a lot of opportunities including referrals, speaking engagements, and other unique projects. This doesn't always mean that you need to establish relationships with creatives from your particular industry. Sometimes you have to think outside of the box. For example, we've personally found that the majority of brands who hire a brand designer often also need photography services. For this reason, we've actively sought out creative friendships with brand designers because we know that they are more likely to refer someone they know and trust vs someone else. We've also discovered that many brands want both photography and videography services. Since we don't do videography, we often have a small list of videographers that we like to either partner with or refer the client to them directly. By creating an authentic community online, you'll be able to establish your credibility and build a positive reputation.

Wow. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Apparently, there was a lot to say and I realized too late that I probably could have written an entire post for each section but here we are. Again, these are just some of the most simplest and cost-effective marketing strategies that you can start implementing today if you aren't already doing so. Got any marketing tips yourself? Share it with us over on Slack!

Is it the weekend yet?
Arabela