How to Use Digital Marketing to Promote Your Business

For Freelancers & Independent Consultants

The importance and value of implementing an effective digital marketing strategy to promote a business, corporation, or agency is quite apparent. It is essential to their overall success.

But what about as a freelancer or independent consultant? How can YOU use digital marketing to promote your business and see growth in real-time? Well, if you’re a freelancer or independent consultant, this article is for you!

What follows will be a discussion about how you as an independent consultant can use digital marketing as a means of promotion. Further, we’ll discuss the advantages that come along with implementing a digital strategy as an independent consultant.

Digital marketing isn’t just reserved for large corporations and major brands. Quite the opposite, in fact. To learn how YOU can begin to grow your small business through digital marketing, continue reading…

The Importance of Digital Marketing

A Huge Number of People are Online or Use Digital Media

According to Statista, “As of January 2021 there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide – 59.5 percent of the global population. Of this total, 92.6 percent (4.32 billion) accessed the internet via mobile devices.”

Interestingly, they also mention that in the United States, people spend 7 hours per day on the internet, about 2 and a quarter hours a day on social media, more than 4 and three quarter hours viewing television and video streaming content. This reflects the growing importance of digital media.

Digital Marketing is for Small Business, Too

Today, whether you are a large corporation, a freelancer, or an independent consultant, the value of digital marketing is high. Not only has it changed the way we communicate, both during our leisure time and professionally, but it’s given businesses large and small an opportunity, a platform, for rapid growth.

What is Digital Marketing?

According to Neil Patel, “Digital marketing is the act of selling products and services through channels such as social media, SEO, email, and mobile apps. Basically, digital marketing is any form of marketing that involves electronic devices.” (SEO is search engine optimization.)

He provides a very engaging overview of digital marketing. Also, Wharton Online also provides an excellent overview, The Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing.

What is Your Strategy?

No matter how you define growth in terms of digital marketing metrics (such as Calls to action – CTA’s, conversion rates, traffic, return on investment – ROI, sales, engagement, social media following, impressions, etc.), it’s crucial to have a strategy in place to achieve it. Not to mention, when done properly, digital marketing is the most cost-effective strategy available.

The question, however, remains; how do you use digital marketing to grow and promote your business? It holds true that while digital marketing is all but a magical wand for businesses and independent consultants looking to grow, it’s quite ineffective if you don’t know how to implement it. So, it is good to learn as much as you can about digital marketing.

Whether it’s social media management, content strategy, metric analysis, email marketing, SEO, or otherwise, it’s imperative that you first understand what you’re doing.

How to Promote Your Business as an Independent Consultant

Promoting your business online, especially as an independent consultant or freelancer can be difficult. While it’s impossible to layout an entire roadmap to success in this article, and though digital marketing is not the only way to find clients, below are a few helpful tips to get you started.

Outline Clear Goals & Objectives

In order to make any good progress with implementing a digital marketing strategy, you must first outline clear goals and objectives. This will provide you with a roadmap of sorts.

Build Your Brand

As a freelancer or independent consultant, you will be marketing your services. A consistent image and message is important everywhere that your business appears. Your potential clients need to understand who you are, what services you offer, and how you stand out from your competitors. Building your brand requires a deep dive into why, what, and how you are doing what you do. Here is an excellent article outlining how to go about this, by Sonia Gregory: 11 Simple Steps for a Brand Building Process.

Define and Research Your Target Audience

Next, know your audience! What’s the demographic (i.e. age, gender, location, interests, etc.).

You should try to understand what are the goals of you clients, what motivates them, and what are the painful problems for which they need solutions. What are their concerns and what do they want?

Once you’ve clearly defined your audience, you’ll have a better idea of where they spend their most time online (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Google, Email, etc.).

The initial information gathered via your goals, objectives, and target audience research will set you up for the next step which is the planning and implementation of the digital marketing strategy itself. It’s here where you’ll begin to promote your business!

Plan, Implement, & Adapt

This phase is where you’ll begin to promote your business as an independent consultant. Based on what you’ve planned, your marketing strategy is likely to include your website and social media pages.

By using common digital marketing practices like SEO, digital ads, copywriting, social media management, email marketing, mobile optimization, and web development, among other things, you’ll begin to reap the rewards of the digital world!

A Final Word

As an independent consultant or freelancer, you have the power to control your destiny. Whether you want to tackle it on your own or hire help, your success is ultimately in your hands!

If you feel overwhelmed, don’t fret; it’s totally normal! As a recommendation, consider working with a marketing agency. Not only will they be able to guide you through the process but they’ll bring their experience to expedite your digital strategy so that you can focus on your business.

Good luck!

See: Consulting: How to Find Clients

What are your thoughts?