Marketing

As a freelancer, you have to market the hell out of you.

Following the logic of my previous post (Importance of business - A Restaurant Analogy) - If you don’t make people aware of your existence, you will have a really hard time getting a job. That’s why marketing is important. It’s how you introduce yourself to people who still don’t know you.

Create a personal website, a SoundCloud profile, a Twitter account, Facebook account, GooglePlus, forums related to what you do, and try to show your work to the right people. You never know when and where work is going to show up from.

2 days ago I had finished all the work I had to do and was wondering what steps I should take. The next day (yesterday), I got an e-mail from a director I had written some months ago to possibly work for his project. We will see what happens. This is one of the reasons you have to let people know you exist and it WILL mean investing a LOT of time and energy in it.

If you are a film composer and can’t work as a composer assistant in L.A., because you live outside a city with that kind of market, don’t e-mail the big composers as they already have their own team. Don’t e-mail musicians. Sure, they might bring you work but you are probably wasting your energies.

Use your energies to find directors/producers who still don’t have their own team. Let them know you exist. They communicate with other directors and producers. The chances of getting a job by contacting these people are far greater. This is why it is important to know WHO your “target audience” is.

Many companies spend a ton of money figuring out who their target audience is and then customize their message to them. If they have a product… lets say shoes.. for teenagers, it wouldn’t make sense to advertise them with a formally dressed adult wearing them, even though it could serve for that purpose as well.

Marketing doesn’t just involve what you put out there on the internet or newspapers (by the way, it should be treated as carefully as you treat your art so that the people have the right idea about you) it’s also how you talk to people. Don’t underestimate yourself. As an artist, I know how hard this can be at first because we are always looking to improve our work. I will write more about it on my next post. However I will leave you this question: if you are hiring a TV cable service and they tell you “yeah, well… we’re still learning… so… yeah.. we try our best though!!”, would you WANT to hire them? (by the way, every good artist is constantly learning)

Your product is the thing you create and you want to be able to make a living out of it. So, market it, learn who your target audience is and make them aware of your existance.