Now, frankly, this isn’t a question that can be covered comprehensively in a blog post. Finding clients is one of the biggest challenges freelance ELT teachers, trainers and other language teaching professionals face, and the best approach will depend on what you offer, who you want to work with and where you are in your business.
However, there are some key things that apply to almost every language teaching freelancer looking for work or clients.
And they’re worth thinking about before you spend hours posting on social media, setting up a website or trying yet another marketing tactic.
1. Find your niche
In other words, what do people (or publishers or other organisations) need help with that you are particularly well placed to offer?
A simple question, but not always easy to answer.
You can probably help in lots of ways, but the sweet spot is where your skills and experience meet a genuine need that people are willing to pay to have addressed.
If this is something quite specialised that relatively few other people are offering, so much the better, provided there’s enough demand.
For example, you might specialise in English for the wine industry or English for architects. Or perhaps you work with a particular group of learners, helping them overcome a problem that other teachers don’t fully understand.
But you don’t necessarily need an extremely narrow niche to be successful.
In fact, the very existence of competition can be reassuring, because it suggests there’s already a market for what you do.
The question then becomes what you specifically bring to the party. Maybe it’s your particular approach, specialist experience or understanding of the people you want to work with.
Having a clear niche makes marketing so much easier because you can talk directly to the people you want to attract, about things that actually matter to them.
If you’d like to explore this further, I’ve brought together some useful videos and articles in my niching and positioning resource centre.
2. Create an offer that works
All too often, I come across freelancers who are offering a particular way of doing things simply because that’s what they’ve seen other people do.
But just because something works for someone else doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for you or your clients.
Take some time to think about what your potential clients really want to achieve and what would be the most effective way to help them get there.
Is charging an hourly rate, for example, actually ignoring a lot of the value you provide outside those hours? What is the result you help people achieve really worth to them?
If you’re a teacher or trainer, could a group programme work better for a particular kind of client? Could some of the learning happen independently, leaving more of your time available for personalised support?
Of course, that doesn’t mean you should automatically create a course or group programme. The right format depends on your clients’ needs and what makes sense for your business.
It’s also worth thinking about the time involved in delivering and marketing your offer, and whether the price will make the work financially worthwhile.
And consider how you describe it.
Potential clients need to understand what you’re offering, who it’s for and why it might be worth investing in. Simply describing the number of lessons or hours involved may not give them enough information to make that decision.
A well-designed offer, communicated clearly, can make an enormous difference to how easily you attract clients.
3. Work out where and how to find your clients
Once you have a clearer niche and an offer that meets a genuine need, you’re in a much better position to decide where to find potential clients and how to reach them.
This is where I often see freelancers getting stuck.
They assume they need to be posting on LinkedIn every day, starting a YouTube channel, launching a podcast or doing whatever marketing activity someone else has told them is working brilliantly.
But where do your potential clients actually spend their time? Where do they go for information, recommendations or help with the problem you solve?
If you work with corporate clients, LinkedIn might be a good place to build relationships with decision-makers. Professional associations, industry events and partnerships could also be worth exploring.
If you work with individual learners, the best approach might be quite different. Perhaps referrals, relevant online communities or content answering the questions they’re already searching for would work better.
And if you work with publishers or other organisations, building relationships with the people who commission work may be much more useful than trying to grow a big social media audience.
There’s no single marketing strategy that’s right for every ELT freelancer.
Whatever approach you choose, you need to help potential clients understand what makes your work relevant to them.
That might mean sharing useful ideas, demonstrating your expertise, talking about client successes or creating opportunities for people to get to know you and your approach.
And make sure people know what they can actually buy from you! It’s surprisingly common to come across freelancers who share lots of interesting content but rarely explain how someone could work with them.
Of course, attracting clients in this way won’t necessarily happen overnight. It takes time to build relationships, establish a reputation and develop enough trust for someone to decide to invest in your services.
But once you have a clear idea of who you’re trying to reach and why they might choose you, your marketing becomes much more purposeful.
And you can spend less time wondering which tactic to try next.
For more practical ideas, have a look at my Finding and attracting clients resource centre.
Want to attract more right-fit clients without working all hours?
If you’ve been trying lots of different ways to find clients without getting the results you’d like, it might be time to look at what’s really going on.
In my free four-part video series, Booked Out Without Burning Out, I explore why some freelance language professionals struggle to attract the clients they want, even when they’re putting plenty of effort into marketing.
We’ll look at the foundations that make your business attractive to potential clients, how to communicate the value of your work and what it takes to build a more profitable, sustainable business.
It’s practical, it’s free, and you can watch it at your own pace.
Watch Booked Out Without Burning Out