Is marketing yourself vanity, or part of your job?

It's eleven at night. Someone has a problem that has been eating at them for weeks. They pick up their phone, type a few words into Google, and two names come up.

The first has a clear website. It explains what they do, who they do it for, how to get started. There's a photo, and three articles that seem written just for this person. The second name has an empty page and a phone number.

The second one is you. And you're better.

That person will never know. They book with the first one.

Is marketing for salespeople, or is it part of the job?

A lot of serious professionals have a prejudice about marketing. They link it to the salesman who shouts, to inflated promises, to posts that only talk about extraordinary results. And since they're serious people, they decide to stay out of it. "I'll let my work speak for itself."

Unfortunately, work doesn't speak. It only speaks to people who have already bought it. For everyone else, the people who don't know you yet and have exactly the problem you can solve, your work simply doesn't exist.

"But I get all my work through word of mouth." Good: word of mouth is the oldest and most effective form of marketing there is. It does have a limit, though, and you only notice it over time. It only reaches people close to your current clients, which means the same circles, the same age group, the same neighbourhood. The day you want to change the kind of work you do, or raise your price, or simply fill the gaps in your calendar, you realise you don't control word of mouth. And that outside that circle, nobody knows you exist.

So it's worth changing the question. Instead of "is it right for me to do marketing?", try "is it right that the people who need me don't know I exist?". Put that way, the answer looks rather different.

Why do clients choose people who market better even if they're worse?

Because they have no other way to choose.

In 1970 the economist George Akerlof published a paper that later helped earn him the Nobel Prize. He studied the used car market and described a precise mechanism. When buyers can't tell good quality from bad, the best sellers can't charge more, and little by little they leave the market. The others stay. Competition on its own doesn't fix things. It makes them worse. You need something that makes quality visible, like a reputation or a guarantee.

Now apply that to your own work. Someone looking for a consultant, a nutritionist, an engineer to redo their project doesn't have the tools to judge your expertise. They haven't studied what you studied. They can only judge what they can see. How you explain their problem, whether you understand them, whether they find traces of your work, whether someone speaks well of you.

If you don't show any of that, nobody thinks "I wonder how good they are". They think you're not there, and they pick someone who is.

That's where marketing stops being vanity. It becomes the way you make visible a quality that would otherwise stay locked in your office. I write more about this in Why does everyone else seem to make it straight away, and not me?.

How do you promote yourself without feeling arrogant?

By talking about the problem before you talk about yourself.

Arrogance creeps in when you're at the centre of the message. My qualifications, my successes, how good I am. Marketing that works for a serious person puts the reader's problem at the centre. It describes that problem better than they could describe it themselves, and shows them how much standing still is costing them.

When someone reads something of yours and thinks "this is exactly me", your name doesn't come across as arrogant. It comes across as useful.

Two practical exercises. The first is to write down the questions your clients ask you most often in the first phone call, in their own words. Each of those questions is an article, a post, a page on your website. The second is to describe a mistake you often see people make in your field, and what happens next. Nobody accuses you of vanity for warning them about a mistake.

How much time should you spend on marketing if you work alone?

Less than you fear, but consistently.

The classic mistake when you work alone is treating marketing as something to do when you have time left over. You never have time left over. Your calendar fills up with clients, then the clients finish, and only then do you remember you were supposed to be visible. You start from scratch, anxious, at the worst possible moment.

It's better to treat it like a regular client. One hour a week, always the same slot, booked in your calendar like an appointment. In that hour you write something useful or update a page on your website. One hour every week is worth more than ten hours squeezed into a month of panic.

There's also a less obvious reason to be consistent. What you publish today doesn't bring in clients today. It works slowly, like a seed. An article written in March gets found by someone in November, at eleven at night, with their problem in their hands. People who only publish when their calendar is empty expect the seed to bear fruit that same week, and when it doesn't, they conclude that marketing "doesn't work for me". It works all right. It just takes patience, and patience costs less when the hour is already booked.

The enemy here has two faces. On the inside there's inertia, the "I'll do it when I have time" that has been going on for years. On the outside there's invisibility, meaning the person at eleven at night who books with someone else. You beat the first with a fixed appointment. You beat the second by beating the first.

If you feel you're good and nobody knows it, and you can't see where to start making yourself findable, let's grab a coffee. In thirty minutes we'll look at what people see today when they search for you, and what they should be seeing.

Frequently asked questions

Do freelancers really need marketing?

Yes, because the people who need you can't choose you if they don't know you exist. Word of mouth works, but it only reaches people who are already close to your current clients. Marketing done well brings the right people to you and helps them understand what you do before they even call.

How do you do marketing without sounding like a salesperson?

Put the reader's problem at the centre, not your qualifications. Answer the questions clients ask you in the first phone call, describe the mistakes you often see in your field, explain what happens if people wait. When someone recognises themselves in what you write, they see you as someone who understood them.

Why do clients choose less skilled professionals?

Because they often lack the tools to judge technical expertise and choose based on what they can see: clarity, presence, reviews, content. The economist George Akerlof showed that when buyers can't tell quality apart, the best sellers struggle to stand out. Making your quality visible is the only way to avoid being overtaken.

How much time should a solo professional spend on marketing?

Consistency matters more than volume. One fixed hour a week, booked in your calendar like a client appointment, is sustainable even when you're busy. In that hour you write something useful or update a page. Only doing marketing when the clients run out forces you to start from scratch at the worst possible moment.