Why you want repeat clients.

Repeat clients are extremely valuable. My own business is formed around a core of repeat clients for whom I do projects on a weekly, monthly or intermittent basis. Repeat clients require far less marketing, if any, and they provide a steady core of income and workload around which you can build the rest of your business. Some of my repeat clients have standing projects with me, while others send me requests for articles or work on a variable basis. All of this is work that I don’t have to go look for in outside channels, which is a very good thing for a self-employed professional.

How to effectively market to repeat clients.

It costs significantly less in terms of time and effort to market to repeat clients. Personally, I send holiday cards to my core clients every year, follow up every project with an invitation to contact me if they need any additional work, and check in periodically to see how they’re doing. Providing valuable blog content also helps retain repeat clients in that your clients may follow your blog, and then think of you when they have a particular project that needs attention.

Different ways in which repeat clients can benefit you.

I’ll use my personal business to illustrate the different ways in which repeat clients provide untapped value:

• I do several monthly newsletters for different businesses, that fall during different weeks of the month. I’ve been doing these newsletters for years. They are a steady, guaranteed source of business.
• I write articles on a weekly basis for one client, ranging from 10 to 40 articles, depending on the client’s needs. I’ve been working with this client for going on three years. This is an invaluable source of steady work that I don’t have to go seek elsewhere.
• I complete monthly blog projects for a few clients. I can write these entire projects at once, or I can do them on a weekly basis, depending on my workload. This gives me the flexibility to plan around other large projects while simultaneously having steady sources of income via these monthly projects.
• I have clients who contact me on an as-needed basis for additional work. These clients may go 6 months without needing a project, or they might contact me every 2-3 months for a new project. These clients come to me – I don’t need to go hunting them down or sourcing additional work to fill that workload.

Compare repeat clients to traditional marketing.

To really see the value that repeat clients add, let’s take a look at my traditional marketing for new clients and projects:

• I spend anywhere from 2 to 10 hours every week looking for new clients and projects;
• I bid on anywhere from 10 to 30 projects every month, and each of these bids takes from 10 to 40 minutes to draft, which costs me anywhere from 2 to 20 hours per month writing bids;
• I typically get anywhere from 2 to 5 ‘additional’ projects per month; roughly a 16% to 20% success rate.

This means that in a given month, I might spend 60 hours on direct marketing – looking for work and bidding on projects (not counting my other indirect marketing efforts) with only a 16% to 20% success rate. This means that maybe 9 of those hours actually result in paying work.

With repeat clients, I spend anywhere from 0 to 30 minutes per month on marketing efforts. Either I do nothing, or I spend a few minutes sending out emails. I spend a couple of hours during the holidays writing cards. And each and every minute I spend results in a direct response – continued work from these repeat clients. I spend absolutely 0 time on wasted marketing with repeat clients.

In a client-driven business, that return on investment for marketing efforts is HUGE.

Make an effort to retain repeat clients.

Because repeat clients form such a strong core of my business, I make an effort to build relationships with repeat clients. When I bid on projects, I spend more time bidding on projects for people who need ongoing work than on one-off projects. I make sure I provide quality work, on time, so that clients will want to use me again. And I communicate proactively with those clients to ensure that they’re satisfied, meed their needs and find out if they have other untapped needs that I can help fill.

These are all relatively simple efforts that go a long way toward building lasting relationships with repeat clients. I would do these things anyway because I’m a professional and I pride myself in delivering quality work, but the added incentive of retaining new repeat clients is huge. Any writer or small business professional can utilize these philosophies to build business and drastically increase the ROI of repeat-client-related marketing dollars.

Set aside a portion of every day to look for new clients.

The biggest challenge on every freelancer’s page is staying busy. You’ve got to build time into every single day to look for new work. Even if you’re in the middle of a huge project and won’t need work again for weeks, you should start putting feelers out early. Bid on a job a few months down the line. Make preliminary contact with a client about a project in the future. Do something every single day to find new work, even if it’s just to peruse your favorite freelance bulletin board or touch base with former clients about a need for ongoing work.

Depending on my workload, I set aside one or two hours every day for the vital task of finding new work. I also write a fair number of magazine queries, so these two hours include writing and sending out query letters. As you establish relationships with clients and editors, you won’t need to spend as much time looking for new work, but it’s still something you should do every day.

Writing is a numbers game: set a goal for projects and queries for week.

I view writing as a numbers game. If you bid on enough projects or send out enough queries, chances are good that you’ll get something eventually. As your portfolio grows and you can site more and more impressive publication credits, you’ll have to send out fewer queries or project bids. This is an area where putting in a lot of work in the beginning can make your life exponentially easier down the road. I try to send out a minimum of two query letters per day, for a total of ten per week. When I know I’m going to have a busy week, I try to work on the query letters on the weekend so I’m prepared and don’t have to spend as much time on it during the weekdays. On very busy weeks, I may only get 3-5 query letters or project bids out, but if I shoot for ten, I find that I get enough work to keep me going.

Make yourself work for at least six hours per day.

The six-hour goal isn’t always necessary or even practical for a freelancer, especially when you combine it with an hour or two spent seeking work, but it’s a good goal to strive for in order to ensure you’re doing enough work. If you don’t have an assignment or project outstanding, research something new that you can write about. This makes your life easier when it’s time to write queries or articles about unfamiliar subjects, and learning new things is great inspiration for new article ideas. If you don’t have work and simply can’t think of anything to research, work on improving your portfolio. Brush up those rusty pieces, or draft sample documents you can shop to clients. The work will make you money eventually, and it’s a good use of otherwise unproductive downtime.

Spend at least three hours per week on marketing.

You could be the best freelancer in the world, and it wouldn’t matter if people didn’t know who you are. Spend at least three hours per week on marketing. This could be in the form of submitting articles to article directories, working to improve your website, drafting blog posts for popular sites, networking with other writers or doing anything to generally get your name out there. Depending on your niche, you may want to use this time to set up interviews with local PR firms that may need occasional freelancers, contact local software or IT companies if you’re a tech writer looking for freelance gigs, or query former clients about sales copy performance so you can show the results to potential clients. Three hours per week marketing goes hand-in-hand with seeking work daily, but marketing effectively and regularly can help bring clients through your door even when you’re not looking.

Devote two hours per week to administrative tasks.

Business administration is an important role for the average freelancer, so build time into your schedule to perform administrative duties. Use this time to file contracts and pay stubs, invoice clients and follow up regarding outstanding invoices. A little organization goes a long way, and doing these administrative tasks regularly means you don’t have to waste precious minutes or hours of work time to find an important document or follow up on outstanding invoices. Building regular time into your schedule for these administrative tasks lets you focus on the important business of picking up business and writing the rest of the time, so do yourself a favor and structure this into your schedule to make yourself a more efficient freelancer.

How structure makes you more money.

If you make the effort to structure your time, you’ll be on top of your writing game. By spending five to ten hours per week looking for work, even when you’ve already got projects, you can ensure you never have downtime when there simply isn’t enough work to keep you busy. If you market effectively for approximately three hours per week, you’ll have clients coming to you, even when you’re not looking for them. When you know you’ve got a built-in time to follow up regarding outstanding invoices and filing, you won’t find yourself switching back and forth from task to task and spinning your wheels ineffectively. By structuring your time, you’ll make yourself a more efficient freelancer, and you’ll be able to focus on your bread and butter: finding and completing work.