Are you a Facebook ad freelancer riding the wild waves of the Lead Generation Roller Coaster?  Full roster one month and the next, you’re scrambling for clients? Well, secure your harness, because in today’s episode of Online Confidential, we’re talking about this crucial issue that can be a make-or-break factor in the freelance landscape.

As a freelancer, your client capacity is very different to an ad agencies. Your focus is on providing tailored, hands-on service to a select few rather than having a sales team who needs calendars fully booked and onboarding 5 clients a week. It’s a bespoke, personalized approach that adds real value and your clients love it. But this model brings its own challenges. While you can be happily at capacity for a few months, in one week you may have 2 clients who ask to pause their ads – maybe because they are between launches, taking the summer off or you’ve done such a good job, they are at capacity for new clients!    So you want a way to still attract and connect with potential leads that can have clients waiting to work with you and which allows you to comfortably bring onboard perhaps one or two clients a month. 

However, the reality of freelancing often proves to be different. The day-to-day demands of managing client work can become all-consuming, and in the midst of all that, your marketing strategies might take a back seat. The result? You pause agreements with 2 clients and you end up might end up in a reactive mode, scrambling to find a couple of new clients. 

That’s where the roller coaster ride starts. You hastily launch ads, spend $1k get $15 leads, 10 booked calls, 7 no shows, 2 who don’t qualify for your Done for you services and 1 who is upset that you won’t run their ads for free. The ride takes you to a low point of frustration, and suddenly, you start thinking smaller and you question all your life decisions to this point! 

Ads are undeniably a powerful tool to promote your business and I believe that ad managers should always be running ads themselves, but they aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution. When used in isolation, relying solely on ads can lead to that chaotic roller coaster ride I mentioned earlier. Just like we tell our clients, right?  Not only is a holistic marketing strategy needed, but also integrating Facebook Ads into an overall marketing strategy, should also be our focus for our own business.

Now, I’m not saying to ditch ads altogether. Quite the opposite! Ads are a fantastic way to reach new audiences and get your message in front of the right eyes as well as nurturing audiences. What I am saying is that ads should be part of a more holistic marketing strategy.

You see, when ads are combined with other marketing methods like content marketing, social media engagement, networking, and personal connections, you create a more balanced and resilient approach. This combination ensures that if one method falters (like those no-show calls or non-qualified leads), you’re not left high and dry.

By integrating ads into a broader strategy, you’re creating multiple touchpoints with potential clients. It’s like fishing with a net versus a single line. Plus, with varied approaches, you’re likely to attract a more diverse array of clients, which can help stabilize your income and growth.

So yes, keep those ads running, but make sure they’re working in harmony with your other marketing efforts. 

But when we are caught in that freefall from being at capacity to suddenly having to quickly find clients to make up the revenue gap, it can rattle us mentally, and we may be too quick to sign up a new client who isn’t the right fit, or reduce our prices, because we don’t know where the next client is coming from.  

Please, don’t underestimate your potential. We live in a world where there are hundreds of millions of businesses around the world.  Your services are not limited to where you live. Even though, within a small radius from where you live, there could be hundreds of thousands of potential clients. Your prospects are not limited but your approach to finding them might be.

So, how do you keep a steady pipeline and avoid the roller coaster ride? The answer lies in maintaining your marketing efforts, irrespective of how busy you are with client work. This doesn’t mean you’re always in a rush to sign new clients, but rather consistently nurturing prospects.  And this is done with strategic inbound and outbound marketing strategies.  Some of which can be automated (we looove automations) and some are extremely cost effective.

So that when the time comes for you to sign a new client or 2, you won’t be starting from scratch – you’ll have potential clients who have been warmed up and are familiar with your services. As a freelancer, ultimately we want to find the clients who will be with us for long term retention, but we always want to have a few irons in the fire. Don’t neglect your business while you’re busy building someone else’s.

Communication plays a big role in this balancing act. It’s okay to let your prospects know that you’re currently at capacity but will have openings in a few months. Not only does this build anticipation for your services, it also conveys your value and the demand for what you offer and your limited availability.  Then when you do have an opening, they know they need to act now to get to work with you. 

And that’s how you step off the roller coaster and onto a steady ship. It’s about balancing client work with continuous marketing and communication. 

In the upcoming episodes, we’re going to dig in further to what this actually looks like as we explore specific outbound and inbound marketing strategies to help you find the RIGHT clients.  So make sure you subscribe and follow to get all the secret Ad Manager business you’ll only get, right here.

Stay tuned, and I’ll catch you in the next episode!