While nobody can accurately predict future events and their impact on business, it is possible to factor in trends and apply common sense and proven business strategies to help combat unforeseen challenges and mitigate any adverse effects on your freelance business as much as possible.
Here are 4 strategies to consider to help you future-proof your freelance business.
1. Invest in yourself
Investing in yourself is always a good idea. Whether you are learning new skills, up-skilling or re-skilling, having more strings to your bow means you can offer more services and products to your clients, add more value, and potentially charge more (or at least have more offers and routes to profit).
Even if you don’t apply the skills straight away, it will allow you to expand or diversify your product range and put you in a better position should you need to ‘pivot’ in the future.
Learning and developing new skills also means staying relevant, boosting confidence, enhancing personal growth, and being adaptable to change.
But it’s not just your skill set to consider when investing in yourself but also your health and well-being. At the end of the day, as a freelancer, you are central to running your business.
It’s paramount that running your business does not take a toll on your health. Whether this means you invest in regular breaks, healthy exercise, pamper days, or simply delegate, outsource, or automate certain tasks, the key is that you are making an investment in yourself so both you and the business perform at their best and, in turn, provide value to clients.
2. Embrace and make good use of tech
Embracing new technology relevant to your business so it performs more efficiently makes sense and can help future-proof your business so it keeps pace with the times. Clients will most likely be used to dealing with tech and expect your processes to be fast and efficient, too. So it’s important you don’t get left behind.
However, before investing your time and money into a tech stack, ensure it works for you and your business.
Good automated workflows can shave off hours and save you money. Take invoicing software, for example; good invoicing software can help get you paid faster and, therefore, improve your cash flow.
Invoice Ninja is a leading free invoicing software for small business invoicing, online payments, tracking expenses and billable tasks.
What’s more, Invoice Ninja lets you connect to thousands of apps via our platform integrators, such as Zapier, Make, Pabbly and more – further speeding up your workflows.
Take a look at some of them here.
And try Invoice Ninja for free at the link here.
3. Have a contingency plan in place
Having some form of disaster recovery/contingency plan in place is a good idea.
When things go wrong or events occur that we cannot anticipate, it’s helpful to know what to do next. Your plan doesn’t need to be the finely detailed set of procedures that most large corporations have in place for disaster recovery. It can be as simple as knowing who to contact in an emergency, what passwords to change in the event of a cybersecurity breach, where the data is backed up, and other sensible emergency protocols.
Take time to identify potential risks in your freelance business and draw up a plan for dealing with them. For example, what should you do if there is a power outage, a natural disaster, such as a severe weather event, or another pandemic event?
4. Be consistent with marketing
A reason why many freelancers experience the dreaded freelancer feast and famine cycle is because they are inconsistent with their marketing, especially during times when they have plenty of client work, which is completely understandable.
However, nowadays, there are plenty of processes that can be sped up by automation and done behind the scenes, especially when it comes to social media marketing. You can create social media posts to market your business in advance and set them to be published in the future.
Email marketing is another effective way to market your business and can be set up in advance. Another benefit of email marketing over social media marketing is that your email list is your asset. Your social media followers might not see your posts due to algorithms, etc., and if the platform decides to change or close, you no longer have access to those followers. With your email list, emails get delivered straight to your potential client’s inbox.
It pays to take a proactive stance with your freelance marketing and always follow up with potential clients.
Having a consistent marketing strategy will help future-proof your business so you always have a steady stream of clients in your sales pipeline.
As the saying goes, ‘Always be marketing’.