Busting the Freelancer Myth: You Are NOT Just in the Service Business

Photo by JohnJoh

I hate to break it to you… but there’s more to freelancing than delivering services. To help your prospect make the most of your offerings you’ll want to enter the business of information (and some other cool productized forms of your skills and knowledge).

As fantastic as this will be for your clients, it is also exponentially beneficial to you. Why?

Because you can’t leverage a service you’re providing yourself. Doing so still plants you squarely in the seat {and cubicle prison} where you’re trading time for dollars.

You can approach this type of leverage from two perspectives:

1. Create bite-sized information or product giveaways that your prospects want and will opt in for. The point of this is to get them into your automated sales funnel that will lead them by the hand to eventually purchasing your services.
   
2. Package your services into information or products so you do the work once and can sell it repeatedly to infinite clients. This will allow you to dramatically increase and automate your income as a freelancer without working yourself into the ground. Because we got into this business for a bit of freedom right? (Your other option for leverage is outsourcing, but we’ll save that for another conversation.)

We’re going to tackle approach #1 in this article. I’ll address #2 in a separate article later on.

How to Craft Giveaways

First, consider what your target prospect would search for online and what she would get excited about receiving. Here are some recommendations for the most common types of freelancers I’ve coached. Be sure to read all examples as many can be used across several service-types – not just the one it’s listed under…

{Oh and a note… everywhere I say “write a guide,” you can replace with “record a video.” Video giveaways are fantastic. See what format your market responds to and give them what they want!}

Programmers, Coders & Software Developers: Craft a whitepaper or two on “7 Mistakes To Avoid When Outsourcing Software Design,” or “Website Best-Practices Primer: How to Design Your Client-Converting Website (Includes Wireframe breakdowns and examples of high-converting website navigation and page layouts!).

You can also create a blueprint document that illustrates project briefs that give  developers and programmers like you exactly what you need so you can give them what they’re looking for. And don’t forget mini-applications or scripts that are in high demand with your prospects! Make sure they’re easy to create but of high value.

Copywriters, Bloggers & Ghostwriters: Consider writing a guide on how to hire and get the most out of a fantastic copywriter. You can share tips on how to communicate your style, personality and brand to a copywriter so they can emulate it, and anything else you want your clients to do when working with you. This helps you train them to be your perfect client! You can also write a guide or two on common challenges or questions prospects have about choosing a copywriter or about crafting good written content in general (which they can use to educate themselves so they can better manage a writer and review their work properly).

Another creative giveaway writers can provide that no other writer currently provides (that I know of) is this: Develop a few document templates for common types of documents or pages your prospects often search for or request that would be of high value to them. For instance, if you target lawyers and your main service is website copy overhauls, you can create a fill-in-the-blanks template for a law firm’s About Us page or Services page that illustrates the key benefits-oriented and visitor-oriented language, plus calls-to-action that are so important for these types of web pages.

Website & Graphics Designers: Many people who need graphics or websites designed don’t know the first thing about how to request what they want. Instead of building a fantastic survey system into your contact or order form that asks the questions you need answered to deliver the best designs, make this survey your giveaway. Package it as a Step-By-Step Blueprint for the Perfect Design Brief that ensures they’ve thought through all the key (and rarely considered) elements of their design. Set it up as a survey they fill out online and can then submit to have a PDF emailed to them of the questions and their answers.

Here’s the key to this: instead of having them opt in first to receive this blueprint (which is our usual process), for this you can just take them directly to the survey because they’re opting in when they give their email address for PDF delivery! And better yet, here’s an automatic upsell… Have a check box that allows them to send their answers to you as well for a free consultation on their project brief and to get a quote on services. They’ve already done the work – they’re psychologically prepped to save themselves further time by giving you the information. If they check that box, be sure to have the survey dynamically add a new option to give you their phone number (or have that as an optional field already).

Photographers, Videographers & Media Editors: As with all other freelancer types, you can always craft a video or PDF giveaway that takes your prospect through key tips, secrets, or mistakes to avoid when taking pictures, shooting/editing video, (or when hiring someone else to do it for them).

I also recommend that you develop easy blueprints for what makes the perfect photograph/video or for key editing functions. Blueprints will be highly visual videos or PDFs where you walk them through the elements of the photo or video and how to craft them to achieve their chief purpose.

As an example, let’s say your core offering is videography and editing services for sales videos, i.e. you specialize in crafting videos that convert viewers into opt ins or customers. In this case, your blueprint could be for the elements every sales video must contain to achieve conversion, such as the importance of the intro animation/headline, featuring the central promise of the offer video, the importance of music and how to choose the type of music as well as where to source royalty-free music. Then you would take them through positioning and framing for live person content, how to drop in screen shots, animation, etc. and so forth to the close, call to action and overall branding.

As with most giveaway types, you want to tell your prospect what and why… then upsell them to working with you to handle the HOW.

“Ummm… that’s a heck of a lot to give away for free…”

Uh huh. That’s the point. The more you give away up front, the more confident your prospect is that you can deliver the goods when she actually pays you.

Now I know that freelancers are often wary of teaching prospects how to do what they do. The point is to deliver the service yourself, not teach them how to do it themselves. Right?

Not exactly. The fact is, when someone learns how much work it takes to do it themselves, learn everything and get it all to work, they get overwhelmed and realize it would be easier to just hire an expert to do it.

Plus in most cases you’re teaching them what to do and why it’s so important. They don’t know the HOW until they work with you.

Craft your giveaway right to upsell them into your services and you’ll get way more people banging down your door than you would had you not educated them on what it takes to do what you do.

How The Upsell Works

Your giveaway won’t accomplish much for you unless you add a conclusion that ties what you just taught them into a persuasive offer to contact you for more information/a consultation/or to purchase services.

How to upsell:

1. After you’ve delivered the meat of your giveaway content, explain a couple key mistakes they should look out for that are common for beginners (or that are common with clients who tried to do it themselves first). This helps your prospect understand how much work/stress could be in store for them by doing it themselves without an expert’s assistance WITHOUT outright deterring them from the option if that’s the way they want to go. You want to stay positive and express that you’re here to be of service, not to outright pitch them.
   
2. Next, explain that it often helps to talk it through with an expert and that you’re happy to provide a free consultation. You can be transparent and say that most people who call you decide to move forward with your services, but you’re not requiring them to. You’re happy to be of service.
   
3. Another offer could be a discount on your services or on a particular package of your services. Give them a coupon and tell them how to contact you to redeem it. Reiterate all the ways they’ll benefit by having you handle the work, tying back to mistakes and added costs they’ll avoid, how it affects their bottom line, etc. Be brief here, but be persuasive. Unlike the consultative approach above, this is an outright selling opportunity so don’t be afraid to demonstrate your value. You can put all of this in the giveaway itself (no more than two pages) or drive them at the end of the giveaway to a landing page that has your sales offer outlined in a video and/or written copy. Be sure in either case to have a BUY NOW button they can click to order right then and there (or to fill out a form to be contacted to finalize sale).

I’d love to hear any additional questions you have about creating giveaway content, so just post them below in the comments. Also be sure to share your experience with providing giveaways so others can learn and benefit from your story!

Rock on you uber{epic}rockstar!