Shhh, it’s a Secret - Marketing to Marketers

April 17, 2008

photo credit: FelipeArte

In a former life, I helped put up Adsense sites with the best of ‘em. Part of that process was getting content to fill a 30-40 page Website. Being a shrewd marketer, I outsourced most of my article writing, on the cheap of course.

But, I soon realized that I was spending more time editing the articles than putting sites together. And fully built sites were bringing in the money. I thought outsourcing that piece—the article writing—would make my life easier. It didn’t.

After putting up with the re-writes for a year, something had to change. I was wasting time and money and losing my sanity in the process. So, I brainstormed.

If I was editing and re-writing most of my outsourced content, surely other marketers were in the same boat. Instead of being an Internet Marketer (IM), I wondered if there was a demand for quality content within the industry.

Here’s what I did…

Made a list of Internet Marketer Subscription sites

This list included PLR (Private Label Rights) sites, automated site builders, mastermind groups, and online class (how-to) sites. Why subscription sites? Because they would have an ongoing need for content.

To keep people subscribed, these sites would have to demonstrate ongoing value to their customers.

Decide on my strengths

I enjoyed writing about business, marketing, online advertising, and other business/technical issues. But, I didn’t enjoy writing about much of anything else. I couldn’t be all things to all people.

So, business and Internet writing played to my strengths. Time to move on.

Develop a “niche” pitch

Since business topics were my strength, I decided to pitch myself as the “bonus” guy. Have you ever read a one page sales letter and, after making it to the bottom, noticed that one of the “bonuses” was updated information, revisions, and continued support for the product?

I would pitch myself as the guy who could make that bonus promise an undeniable truth! IMs could take my information, repurpose it for their audience and position themselves as valuable experts.

Pitch it

Very simply and succiently, I emailed a brief message to the top five sites I collected in the first step. Did I hear anything back? No. I took the next five names and did the same thing. Again, no response. Finally, on my third try, I hit pay dirt.

What’s funny is that, after my first bite, the previous site owners starting emailing me.

Out of this one idea I managed to get a steady flow of work and additional, non-writing related work.

The title of this post is ”Marketing to Marketers”. I’m defining a marketer as anyone selling to an end user. It could be a scrapbooking site selling templates to busy moms. Or, it could be a book review site for self published authors.

Whatever the case may be, these site owners have needs that aren’t being met. It could be content creation like I started with. It could be design consulting, tutorial creation, or general site maintenance.

By marketing directly to a group of people who already had clients, I didn’t have to deal with lowballers. I set a fair price and most of them accepted without a blink.

So, instead of focusing on a new advertising campaign, brochure design, or magazine ad, look at the big fish in your industry. How can you take on critical tasks that will save them time and money in the long run?

If you can push their hot buttons, you’ll have more work than you can handle.

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1. Why Blogging is Better for your Freelance Business
2. 20 Places and People that Hire Freelance Writers
3. Do it Yourself Freelance SEO

Posted in Freelance Marketing, Freelance Success