The 7 Step Marketing Plan for Writer

Lately, I’ve heard fellow writers make two recurring statements that go something like this:

“I’m losing work – my clients are cutting back on projects because of the economy.”

“I’ve tried to network for new business but I can’t seem to make the right connections.”

You can blame the struggling economy and lament your lack of connections, but the bottom line is: to consistently profit from your writing you must systematically promote your talent and abilities.

Many of us fill our schedules with projects and then stop looking for more. It isn’t until we are staring at the final delivery date of the final project that we realize we have nothing new to put in its place. So we start looking for work, and sometimes make poor choices because we need something NOW. This is a disastrous way to search for writing work.

Successful business owners have marketing plans—if you sell your writing services, you are a business owner. Do YOU have a marketing plan?

If not, I’m going to make it easy by helping you create your writer’s marketing plan using seven simple steps. Do this process once and you’ll never have to do it again—the benefit is that you’ll know how to open doors to new opportunities with a flick of the marketing switch! Here’s how (includes a free book offer!):

1.    State your marketing purpose

Why are you marketing your writing services? Do you want to get new clients? Do you want to stay connected to the ones you have or get additional work from them? Do you want to find book or copywriting work, or do script writing, speechwriting, etc.? Before you can develop a good, project-attracting plan, you must define the purpose of your marketing.

2.    Identify your target audience(s)

Who has a need for the writing services you offer? If you offer speechwriting, your obvious audiences may be highly visible CEOs and political figures. They may also include audiences like fundraisers, association directors, and keynote speakers. How about radio personalities, professors, and authors? Even people who write or speak for a living, often rely on others to help them craft their words for a speech. Exhaust your research efforts to include every possible audience for your services.

3.    Choose your niche(s) in the marketplace

I know, I know – you can write anything for anyone. But I’ve blogged before about identifying a niche for yourself and I’m going to iterate my belief that you’ll do better if you have one. Let’s stay on the same example of speechwriting. Who would have a better chance of getting an assignment from a mayoral candidate: someone who markets him or herself as an “I can do it all” speechwriter, or someone who markets him or herself as a speechwriter who specializes in political campaigns? It’s okay to have more than one niche, just be sure to market to each one specifically instead of generalizing your effort.

4.    Crystallize the benefits of your services

Repeat after me, “The key to attracting writing assignments is to focus on how I’ll cure my clients’ headaches.” In other words, instead of telling a potential client about what you can do, tell them about what you can do FOR THEM. Pinpoint what you bring to the relationship that will help them solve a problem or meet a challenge. Writers’ resumes always seem to focus on ability – what you do. You will win more assignments if you focus on how what you do benefits your client. For example, instead of saying, “I’ve written more than 50 speeches for top Fortune 500 CEOs,” say something like, “As an experienced speechwriter for top Fortune 500 CEOs, I’ll transform your thoughts and debate ideas into a persuasive, memorable speech designed to move your audience to action.” See the difference?

5.    Create a repeatable marketing strategy

Back in 2003, I authored and published a book entitled, SPLASH Marketing for Overworked Small Business Owners. There were already dozens of marketing books on bookshelves, but they kept trying to teach small business owners how to become marketing experts when, in reality, all business owners want is to learn how to expertly market their own businesses.  So I came up with the acronym “SPLASH” to define a simple process for developing a create-it-once marketing strategy that they could set up once and repeat over and over again.

In a nutshell, I walked readers through a step-by-step process for setting up a “natural” marketing strategy consisting of three basic tactics. A “natural” strategy is made up of tactics you love doing. For example, if you are not comfortable speaking in front of people, don’t use “speaking” as one of your marketing tactics just because someone told you that you should. When you choose something you hate, you will opt not to do it. If you are good at writing direct mail campaigns, prove it by writing and sending a direct mail campaign for your services. Do your emails get a 40% open rate? Then send an email using the same principles to get it opened and read by the people you want to work for. The goal is to define your strategy and tactics just once and use them repeatedly to attract new and recurring writing projects. Then, decide on the best time for implementation of your strategy. Perhaps it is quarterly, every month, or three weeks before the end of your last project deadline.

When you bring consistency to your marketing efforts, they become nearly effortless.

6.    Solidify your identity

Marketing is often focused on branding and establishing an image of how you want to be perceived to your current and potential clients. Whether or not you are interested in creating a brand for your writing services, it is always advantageous to distinguish yourself from your competitors. Everyone’s fingerprints are unique; they identify who you are in a crowd of people who look just like you. Likewise, you want your clients—current and potential—to see you and your services as unique—something they cannot get from anyone else. That means you have to dig deeper than being able to produce great writing—it extends to things like attentiveness, availability, going the extra mile to make a deadline, hanging your shingle on a specialty, and any number of value-added services, talents and skills that make you stand out from everyone else vying for a project. Spend some serious think time to identify what you want to be known for and make sure it is evident in every project you work on and each marketing move you make.

7.    Execute your plan

A plan without action is a waste of your time and the paper it’s written on. None of the previous 6 steps will get you a darn thing if you don’t execute your writer’s marketing plan.

Writers often dread working out the details of business plans and marketing plans but, if you don’t plan for success, don’t be surprised if you don’t achieve any.