How to be the client all freelancers want to stick with long-term
Create an active roster of freelancers you can tap for help any time
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This is the first article in a series on working with freelance copywriters.
I write for most of my clients regularly. Sometimes it’s every month. Sometimes it’s once or twice a quarter. But it’s regular work.
It didn’t always start out that way.
When I first started as a freelance copywriter, I did ad hoc projects for clients. A few were test posts that didn’t work out for one reason or another. Yet others were supposed to be the start of regular work and then never turned into that.
With the benefit of hindsight, I now know what the problem was. My clients didn’t understand how they worked. That made it hard to delegate things to me, the freelancer, in a way that made sense for them.
It wasn’t that they didn’t like my work. They just didn’t like how it aligned with their workflow (or didn’t, as the case may be.)
Marketer, know thyself
These relationships never worked out because my clients didn’t know how they worked, so they weren’t able to successfully delegate the project to me. They weren’t sure what would happen after I submitted the project, so they could never figure out how to continue working with me later on.
They weren’t bad people or even bad marketers. Just bad organizers and delegators.
It took me years to figure out how I worked best and then another 5 years or so to articulate that succinctly for others. Many marketers haven’t had a chance to sort through that because they’re so busy trying to publish content. Or work on an editorial calendar. Or create those TPS reports upper management wants.
Which is why I added workflow questions to my Prospective Client Questionnaire.
Uncovering how you (the client) work
When I speak to a prospect, I ask them how they work.
- Do you have an editorial calendar?
- Is it documented somewhere?
- Do you know how often you publish content?
