Welcome back to the Boss Responses podcast . Our special guest host this week is Jessica Walrack . That's a name you might know if you follow freelance writing topics on LinkedIn . Jessica is the founder of All Things Freelance Writing . Now , that's literally the name of her community All Things Freelance Writing .
She's created a community that helps freelance writers build their ideal businesses , and she offers a blog , a weekly jobs newsletter and other resources that you're probably going to want to get a hold of .
We're going to answer questions together for the first four days of this week and then on Friday , we're going to take a deeper look at the topic of niching down . So , if that's something you've wondered about , maybe you're thinking of niching down and you haven't yet , or maybe you've niched down and you feel like you've made your pawn just a little too small .
Make sure you join us for that Friday episode . Trust me , you do not want to miss it . Today we're going to talk about a question I've been seeing more often lately how do you turn one-off clients into repeat or retainer work so that they keep coming back ? Are you ready ? I am .
If you're a freelancer , business owner or anyone who deals with clients , you're in the right place . I'm your host , teresa Edmond . I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt , imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asked a question I wasn't ready for .
I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business . Each week , my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights . Monday through Thursday , we answer your questions , and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embrace their role as the boss of their business .
Welcome to Boss Responses , jessica . What is the question for day one ?
Okay , so we have Leigh from Chicago and she says that she's having a problem that most people probably won't see as a problem . She's had pretty good success landing clients . She keeps a full schedule and is meeting her income goals , but can't seem to keep clients long term .
So she wants to build a steady stream of repeat and retainer work so she can have a more steady schedule with less marketing and prospecting . She's wondering how can she build longer term relationships with clients .
It almost seems like she has two different things going on here . One I would never recommend less marketing and prospecting , and maybe not prospecting , at least the marketing . You need to keep that going at all times . You need to keep that inbound client list happening and they won't come if they don't know that you exist . So you really can't ever stop .
On that you can fall back a little bit . I recommend always that people market for at least one day of the week , that's just . I have mine set up , so on Fridays I have four hours that I do business stuff and it's almost always marketing . I think that's a separate issue and I don't want to go too deep into that .
But building the long-term relationships with clients , I think that all hinges on value . What value are you offering them and how are you approaching them ? So when you're doing that initial discovery call with the client , is it for one blog post or is it for the potential of a long-term relationship ? And you can set that boundary .
You can say I only work with clients on an ongoing basis because and then you give them the benefits to them so , because it helps me understand their business more fully , I can help them meet their business and content objectives , blah , blah , blah . So you can really do that and it's all in how you position yourself and then how you offer value to them .
And I think that's huge , because I've worked with writers from the other end of the spectrum that they're like are you working with freelance writers ? I'd love to write a blog for you , and then they never come back and I don't have time , if I'm the content manager , to chase them down to see if they want to write another article .
I think if you're running a business , you have to be proactive and you have to tell your clients hey , here's the article . Let me know if there are any edits . I'm ready to start on the next one whenever you're ready to send it , and you can be as positive and optimistic as you want . Or you can say I'd love to write more articles for you .
Do you have another thing that needs done right now ? Or did you know I also do case studies and white papers . So if you offer them continued value , then I think that will build those longer term relationships . If you're doing one and done projects and you're not offering anything else , then you're not going to get a longer term relationship .
How do you handle this , jessica , because I know you're big on inbound clients . You don't do .
Yeah , first , I would agree with you that the marketing should stay consistent . You need to figure out some sort of schedule that you can do on a sustainable , long-term basis , and we'll talk a little bit about that more on day five , about how that can shift over time to not being so demanding .
I used to have this problem too , because I was doing like branding , brand voice guidelines and getting startups set up initially in their content marketing strategy and getting their websites set up . So I do the homepage , a service page , and once those are done , that's it .
I think switching into offering a service that they need on an ongoing basis is hugely important .
So , like now , I offer only blogs and articles to companies that need more than I can even provide on a monthly basis , so that , or maybe if they need an email newsletter every week or twice a month or something social media posts are another one they're going to need those on an ongoing basis .
So , even if that's not the only thing you offer , I think building in a base of things that do require repeating is hugely helpful . And then , like you said , I would agree that sometimes you need to follow up . You need to take the lead on ensuring that they know you're going to offer it on an ongoing basis . It's like hey , I need a blog post .
Sure , we can do this as like a paid test and then see where it goes from there and you can explain to them . I have my regular clients who make orders every month . If you wanted to get on in that kind of program , you can let me know each month how many you need up to this amount or something , just kind of prime them for that ongoing experience .
Yeah , that's brilliant , and I hadn't even thought about the fact that there are people who specialize in things that are just one and done . There is no way to do a repeat work .
So if you are doing a one and done project website design or something like that I mean you need to find an add on or something that can generate that longer term relationship , because they can't really do a new website every week , or right , and companies might not want to do more than a couple of case studies a year or more than a couple of white papers .
So you need to diversify a little bit if you do want that long termterm relationship . That's really great . All right , come back tomorrow and we are going to talk more about finding your limits . How much client work can you actually do before you crack ?