2 Stupid-Obvious Things You Need to Get More Project Leads

We can’t know in advance which marketing moves will work, so we have to put ourselves out there and make a lot of them. Then, we have to pay close attention to what happens.

Take, for example, one of my occasional marketing strategies, being a guest on podcasts.

Finding shows catering to freelancers and consultants was easy enough, and Ed Gandia’s High-Income Business Writing podcast would be at the top of any freelance writer’s list. Still, I could not have foreseen that the one email sent on January 22, 2021 would produce $34,700 for my business, not to mention a friendship. Partnering with Ed became one of the highlights of the year.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and explain the sequent of events:

• I sent Ed a cold email about being a guest on his podcast.
• When I didn’t hear back, I sent a follow-up email, and Ed replied, explaining that his spam filter had caught my first email. Just goes to show you can’t be squeamish about following up.
• Over email we picked the topic for the interview (i.e., how I got started selling strategy as a service). (It’s worth noting that I had shared three potential topics in my first email.)
• Ed and I recorded this episode in May, and it dropped in August 2021.
• During the interview I mentioned that I’d be willing to share my open-ended consulting questions. I also told people to find me on LinkedIn if the idea of selling strategy piqued their curiosity.
• Honestly, I was surprised at how many people reached out. I threw together a GDoc about a paid training and shared it in LinkedIn DMs and emails: “Would you be interested in an in-depth training on this?”
• Six people paid $249 for that workshop, which I delivered September.
• Ed and I reconnected, and he said something along the lines of, “I can’t remember the last time an episode got this enthusiastic of a response.” Both of us started thinking we should pursue the topic further. Maybe some kind of collaboration?
• One thing led to another. I delivered a shortened workshop for Ed’s high-ticket coaching clients in October.
• We developed a plan for a How to Sell Strategy program. I created all the content.
• We launched the program to his audience in February 2022.
• Then, we launched it again in September 2022.
• Along the way, numerous freelance writers have found that episode and reached out to me about coaching. Some became clients.

I didn’t know going in that any of this would happen, but this isn’t an isolated case. My relationships with podcast hosts have created all sorts of opportunities from speaking to consulting engagements.

But again, I didn’t know which podcast episodes or which relationships would pay dividends in advance. You have to take lots of swings to hit the occasional homerun.

Consistency ends the feast-or-famine cycle.

A B2B marketing writer sent me this question in a LinkedIn DM:

What I told him is that freelancers can’t ever stop marketing. You may close a few deals that get you paid this week, this month, and next month, but how are you going to get paid 3, 6, or 9 months from now?

Freelancers talk as though the feast-or-famine rollercoaster is inevitable. Some fluctuation certainly is, and the fluctuation happens no matter what type of business you have. But the highly predictable ups and downs? They’re predictable precisely because most freelancers stop marketing once they have enough work. Yep, a couple of months later, they’ll be in a trough.

There’s never a time when you shouldn’t be marketing. In fact, the best time for marketing is when you’re too busy for it, and the problem of how to find time for it when you have so many commitments to clients is a much better problem than feast or famine.

You’ll always have problems, so pick the better ones.

No matter how clearly I lay out this logic, I always meet with disagreement from swamped freelancers who think I don’t understand their situation.

“I’m simply too busy right now for marketing,” they say with a dismissive smile.

“You need to start telling yourself a different story,” I reply. “There’s always enough time in the day to do what’s most important.”

You never know which swings, which incremental marketing moves, will unlock that next relationship, that pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming project.

So how do you keep marketing when you’re busy?

You need two stupid-obvious things to get more project leads:

1. 1-page marketing plan that captures what you’re testing and observing
2. Morning Marketing Habit

Why the morning for the marketing habit?

It’s the time of day when your willpower is at its peak. Maybe you don’t love putting yourself out there. Maybe marketing feels like dragging yourself to the gym and doing pull-ups slower than an arthritic hippo.

When it’s easier to talk yourself out of something than into it, you have to stack the deck. Make your deposit in the minimum viable marketing piggy bank before you get swept up into client work, admin, email, all the time sucks that end up pushing marketing to the periphery. Do it first so you can’t procrastinate until you haven’t done it in weeks.

Because let’s be frank: neither you nor I has ever heard a freelancer say, “Gee, I really wish I’d started marketing later.”

Unless you have some sort of Google AdWords sorcery up your sleeve, project leads aren’t a faucet you can turn off and on.

To have more feast than famine, you have to stay consistent with marketing even when you’re “too busy.”

To do that, you need a plan and a habit.

I invite you to buy Morning Marketing Habit for $149. Start building the habit that will flatten the ups and downs and get you off the rollercoaster.

Or, you can apply to join the Freelance Cake Community and get Morning Marketing Habit for free inside.