Taking my own advice

I’ve been freelancing since 2011, but have never had a website or anything more than a hotmail address! What kind of marketer does that make me? A busy one.

So why now? Well - because I can. Last year I had client who was in need of a new website. Her previous site had been built in Wix and having been a little sneering of ‘do it yourself’ websites, I found it actually pretty easy to master and decided I could probably create her a whole new one, from scratch. And I did!

Would I do all my clients’ sites this way? Not necessarily. Anything more complex than a simple portfolio site then I'd pull in support from my network of talented designers and developers. But Wix presents an affordable alternative and I've since done two more sites this way too - for Movement Matters and Friends of the Future.

So with these new skills under my belt, it seemed about time that I put mine together too - and here we are.

Why have a website at all after all this time? The obvious answer is ‘to look more professional’ and ‘showcase what I can do’ but it’s much more than that. It’s FUN for one. I get to be creative and make stuff look how I want it to look. But it’s also doing something else…

Marketing - or should I say effective marketing - requires a level of introspection. What is it I do? Who do I want to do it for? Where is the fit? I’ve always been a ‘go with the flow’ kind of person, happy to help where I was called. But at the ripe old age of [redacted], perhaps it’s about time to define what I want to attract.

A website - or any kind of marketing doesn’t have to be all ‘sell sell sell’ (although, let’s be sure to include a call to action in all the right places) - it can also be “this is what I do, this is what I’m like, want to work together?”.

Knowing what you are good at, what you can offer, and who you want to work with (target audience) is really the basics of any marketing strategy. For people who work mostly alone, or in an ad hoc way, it can be hard to know all these things without taking the time to delve into it.

So this is me delving in - via the medium of making my very own website - to “define my proposition”, ask myself what kind of business I want to grow, where I can add the most value, what I find rewarding and think how I want to spend the next years of my working life. It feels a bit bold, but I’m doing it. (Now, here comes the call to action…)

If you need help promoting yourself or your business, and like the sound of my approach. Let’s chat and see if it’s a fit. Just click here and send me a message.