Making time for marketing alongside client work
Marketing needs time alongside paid client work. Practitioners protect that time through different approaches: treating the business as a client, varying the allocation with business needs, or giving sales calls and proposals priority when tasks compete.
Regular time for the business
Time for marketing should be designated and spent regularly, even when client work is busy; that time is not billable.
One freelancer treats his own business as a client: with four clients, the business counts as a fifth and receives one-fifth of his time for marketing and business improvement. Marketing should be targeted to make the best use of time and resources.
An allocation that changes with the practice
A different approach rejects a fixed weekly quota because client workload varies: lighter weeks can provide more marketing time. The time needed depends on previous marketing work, career stage and how much business is wanted; new freelancers generally need more marketing than established ones, although successful freelancers still need occasional active marketing. Establishing a client-focused LinkedIn profile and website, a strong network and a system for following up prospects and colleagues takes more time than maintaining them.
Very rough monthly allocations suggested in 2017 were:
| Stage of practice | Billable work | Marketing |
|---|---|---|
| New freelancer | 20% | 60% |
| Established freelancer meeting income goals, with all or most new business from referrals | 65% | 15% |
| Between those extremes | 45% | 35% |
The remaining 20% was allocated to general business administration.
When developing prospect lists and individually targeted emails, marketing may take 20–50 hours a month until billable-hour goals are achieved. Suggested monthly time for networking was about 3–6 hours with an established network or up to 10 while building one, with about 2–5 hours for follow-up. The networking estimate excluded time spent volunteering or attending conferences and meetings. Regular follow-up with interested prospects who had not yet hired the writer and with key colleagues was considered one of the largest returns on marketing time.
Another established freelancer regarded all his working time as marketing, including small activities carried out throughout the day. In his 2017 account, he had logged 722 billable hours during the previous year, while estimating roughly 2,400 working hours from a 50-hour week with four weeks deducted for holidays, personal time and professional development. He acknowledged that billable hours were probably slightly under-recorded and that some weeks exceeded 50 hours because he also managed subcontracting writers. On those estimates, about 30% of his time was billable and 70% was not; he considered the marketing activities collectively sufficient to support earnings that paid for the unbillable time.
Priority when sales and delivery compete
One freelance writer and coach argued in 2022 for putting sales calls and proposals above every other business task, a position she acknowledged others had challenged. Her reasoning is that expenses continue without income, and a continuing inflow of money allows the freelancer to work without worrying about cash flow. Current clients cannot be assumed to provide continuing work, so sales conversations should continue with companies that may need a freelance writer later, even if they have no immediate need.
Under this approach, a writing project should not lead to a sales call being cancelled or left unscheduled. When a proposal and a writing deadline compete, the proposal is completed quickly to secure future work, with the writer accepting an extra hour or two on the deadline if necessary. This practitioner's approach assumes flexibility in deadlines or in how they are met.