Marketing May Update
Enthusiasm and a sweet spreadsheet alone will only get you so far.
I started Marketing May with chutzpah and (what I thought) was a killer spreadsheet.
Months prior to starting my marketing blitz, I had started adding potential client names to Airtable, where I already track ideas, pitches and job apps.
On an ongoing basis, I added nonprofits that I read about in the news. Think tanks that I sourced in my own reporting. Content agencies that work with social impact organizations. Every top museum in America.
More recently, I developed a letter of introduction template based on the The Five (ish) Sentence Letter of Introduction (LOI) by writing guru and six-figure-freelancer Jennifer Goforth Gregory.
I thought I was in good shape.
Not quite. Within hours of beginning Marketing May, I became totally overwhelmed — a very common feeling for those with ADHD. Here are the lessons I learned in my first few weeks.
Get clear on who your ideal client
Between when I started adding prospects to my spreadsheet and now, I refocused my brand on social impact writing.
That meant that a number of prospects that I initially wanted to write for — including a number of content agencies that do PR for fine artists or travel destination marketing — are no longer the best possible fit for me. Hating to feel like I wasted time researching them, I moved them to a second spreadsheet of lower-priority prospects that I may or may not reach out to later.
I also found myself under-enthused to reach out to other prospects who on paper were still a fit, such as Big Tech companies with DEI initiatives or market research firms. Knowing that I need to bring some passion to the process or I won’t continue with it, I shunted them to the lower-priority spreadsheet as well.
Culling my prospect list was a great way to help me zero in on who my ideal client is now and what I value in a working relationship.
My ideal client is large and well-resourced enough to provide a sufficient volume of work at high rates. But they are also small enough that I feel like I’m part of a team, rather than an anonymous contractor cog in their corporate machine — something I didn’t realize was so important to me when I started my prospect research.
Categorize prospects by organization type and focus
I based my LOI tracker on the one I use for pitches, which doesn’t include the publication type or their main focus. But when I started sending out LOIs, I soon realized I needed more granular details about prospective client than I do for publications.
I had already categorized prospects by type, labeling each with a tag like “nonprofit” or “content agency.” Then, I added an additional column with tags to indicate each prospect’s focus, for example, “arts and culture” or “healthcare.”
Adding details like organization type and focus enabled me to sort the list and send send LOIs in batches, using the appropriate template for that category.
Later, it will also be helpful in analyzing which organizations and industries I get the best response from. Being able to copy and paste the same LOI template really speeds up the process. Which brings me to my next point…
Create a suite of templates
Once I could see the different categories, I developed LOI templates to go with each one.
While many writers opt to niche down, I consider my focus on social impact writing as a way of “niching up.” Social impact is a through line in most of my work, not a highly specific niche like “Bitcoin” or “home security solutions” or “medical devices.”
As I do not have one single niche, my templates don’t look exactly like other writers’ LOIs, and I need more of them.
Each LOI introduces me as a social impact writer, but then highlights my relevant experience for that particular type of client, with their particular focus.
For example, my general LOI for nonprofits looks like this:
Hi TK,
My name is Ruth Terry, and I'm writing to ask if TK uses freelance writers.
I’m an award-winning social impact writer with a master’s of public administration and experience writing grants, case statements, position papers and donor-facing marketing content for nonprofit organizations.
As a journalist, I've also written extensively about public policy and nonprofit solutions to systemic problems. You can find my byline in publications such as CQ Researcher, NBC Think, The New York Times, Time and Yes!, a nonprofit solutions journalism outlet.
Check out my website to view my portfolio and read what clients have to say about working with me. I look forward to hearing from you soon!
But my template for arts and culture nonprofits like museums, looks like this:
Hi TK,
My name is Ruth Terry, and I'm writing to ask if TK uses freelance writers.
I'm an award-winning social impact writer with a master's of public administration, and I wrote my thesis on nonprofit arts institutions. I have experience writing grants, case statements, position papers and donor-facing marketing content.
As a journalist, I've written extensively about nonprofits, philanthropy and cultural heritage, most recently for Yes!, a solutions journalism outlet. I have additional bylines in Al Jazeera, National Geographic, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time.
Drawing on my background in art history and studio art, I’ve also covered arts and culture for Craftsmanship, Vogue Knitting and Zora and won an award for this article in Crafts magazine.
Check out my website to view my portfolio and read what clients have to say about working with me. I look forward to hearing from you soon!
Right now, I have six LOIs, and I expect that list to grow as I move through my prospect list.
Treat marketing as its own project
Researching prospects, developing and customizing LOIs and then sending and tracking them is a part-time job in itself. I’ve honestly found it difficult to maintain momentum and keep up with marketing while juggling other projects, especially because I just didn’t think it would be this time-consuming.
Learn from my mistakes and don’t underestimate the time you’ll need to spend getting the information you need to send out a high volume of LOIs.
While I set myself the goal of sending out five LOIs per day, that just hasn’t happened. I lost steam after the initial round in part because it is just so dang hard to figure out who to contact.
I thought finding editor’s contact info was challenging. But it’s nothing compared to sleuthing out the email addresses of the higher-ups of content agencies that only have contact forms on their websites. Or sifting through countless nonprofit staffer bios just to find the right contact, and then guessing at their email address based on the website URL and/or mining the internet for documents that might give a clue as to the typical email address format.
If after doing my due diligence I still cannot find an email address, I’ve been using the dreaded info@ email, their HR email or, in the worst case, demoting them to the low-priority spreadsheet to revisit later.
Set up a system for tracking responses
Immediately after sending out my first batch of LOIs, I started getting bouncebacks, out-of-the-office replies and emails saying the person I contacted had moved on.
While I have a great system in Airtable for organizing my ideas, tracking pitches and following up with editors, creating a well-oiled machine for tracking LOIs is a work in progress.
I’m currently organizing responses to LOIs in a “marketing” folder in my email, until I make the time to update my trusty spreadsheet with corrected contact information and notes. The next step will be to create a formula in Airtable that will tell me when I need to follow up with people who received LOIs.
A lot of writers say they hate marketing, but the real struggle for me is toggling between marketing and paid projects. My particular brand of neurospiciness makes it difficult to stay consistent with things, particularly repetitive and tedious tasks that have no immediate reward.
In the future, I may try to outsource some aspects of the process to a virtual assistant, if not the actual sending of LOIs then the work of researching clients and finding contact info.
Until that happy day, I’m hoping that the work I put into laying the groundwork with organizing contacts and reflecting on what’s working and what’s not here will make it easier to stay on track. In the meantime, gentle reader, I’d love to hear about your marketing efforts.
What are your most effective strategies for marketing yourself to potential clients?