Before the pandemic, word of mouth was my only form of marketing. I started Nevron because the place I used to intern at found out I could develop software. They were a "Customer Service 3.0" company, and they wanted me to build their "online brain" where all questions and answers would be saved and referred to. Their goal was to minimize their response time and increase the quality of information.
That client ended up hiring me for other projects and started referring me to other clients. Those clients referred me to more clients and the ball kept rolling from there. At the time most of my clients were involved in the events and entertainment industry. Suddenly, the pandemic hit. Fear caused many of my clients to stop spending money and go into survival mode.
That was disastrous for me. I didn't have a portfolio, I didn't have a social media presence, and no marketing strategy in place. Business stopped coming in.
Luckily I had about 6 months worth of money saved up. I was saving the money because I expected the stock market to decline and wanted to have cash ready to invest. The money was enough for me to get by and clients restarted projects again. But I knew that I had to do something about my marketing. I had to at least start being active on social media.
I decided to start creating content. It was bad. I didn't know what to write about or what to create. When I finally decided on what the first post would be about I started designing it. I ended up spending so much time in creating the "perfect" design in Photoshop that I gave up. I felt like I was wasting my time.
After a few failed attempts I decided that I needed to hire someone to create the graphics for me. I had someone in mind that I knew was looking for work and was superb at design. I called him and arranged a meeting. We made a deal for his freelance services in exchange for a fixed amount per month. Since then our social media channels started growing slowly, but steadily.
I still had to provide the content or ideas for the graphics since the graphic designer had no insight in my industry. So I dedicated one day per month to create as many pieces of content that I can.
But once a month is not enough.
Engagement has dropped, the quality of the information is "ok". We need to create content that our potential clients find interesting and useful.
That's why from this week on, I will be dedicating one day per week on marketing.
I will report back on how it goes.