Bracketing Clients To Gain Your Niche: A Freelancing Strategy

One of the most efficient strategies of getting freelance clients is identifying a niche and making all your efforts target people that exist in that niche. The strategy discussed in this article is an extension of niche marketing and might be slightly difficult to implement. It's suggested to try marketing to a highly specific niche first, and if you’ve not even identified one you can find your niche with convergence.

Hopefully, you never find yourself on a modern battlefield, but the author will paint a picture of how this strategy is used as a tactic in warfare. Pretend you are hiding in some thick bushes behind a large rock armed with your trusty…binoculars. As you look out on flat terrain you see an unmanned tank in the distance. The flat terrain plays with your eyes and it's hard to judge exactly how far away it is. You know that’s your target, but you're not sure where to tell artillery to fire a shell. You’ll notify them that you’re going to bracket fire a single shell and immediately call the next after impact of the first. In this way, you can make guesses to get closer with each shell until you're on target. But the target is your target niche, not a tank!

Bracketing Clients In Your Targeted Niche

Rather than being a tactic that lasts 5 minutes, bracketing clients is a short-term strategy that may last for weeks or months. Assuming that you have a niche properly identified and it's extremely specific, you may still lack some key details about them or lack something yourself. You know “approximately” where they are. When you bracket clients you concentrate your efforts on that rough idea of where they are while “where” is a word used rather loosely in this scenario.

When To Bracket Clients

Before getting into the practical application of bracketing clients, it may be helpful to understand when or why you would want to implement this strategy in the first place. One of the key reasons previously alluded to is when there is an objective or perceived lack. Some examples of such are as follows: skills, experience, and tools. However, bracketing clients might also work when you’re trying to find niche clients within a slightly larger pool of clients. This will probably make a lot more sense with an example of practical application as we step outside the theory.

Practical Application

Let’s say that you’re just starting out as a freelancer and you identify your target niche as a graphic designer specializing in designer for individually owned and operated lawn care companies in the southeastern United States. Obviously, one way strategy is to go directly to them through their website or Google My Business listings. However, you may lack general graphic design experience in the real world and want to start “earning your way” closer to your target niche. You set up an Upwork account, and you know of the several thousand jobs posted on the site a very small percentage will be for your specifically defined target niche. You can now bracket to find them while also gaining valuable skills and experience.

Profile

On the public profile, you would loosen it up slightly to include clients that have many similarities as the target niche. For example, you may choose to have the profile market to all lawn-care businesses in the United States or maybe similar service companies within the same southeastern region.

Ideally, your profile should indicate your expertise in the broader industry, region, or other characteristic about the target niche. Simultaneously, it can effectively speak to the broader audience without it trying to “speak to everyone.” Bracketing is more of an art than an exact science in the context of a freelancing strategy because you want to loosen the specificity on client characteristics without becoming too much of a generalist. If someone within your target niche should come across your profile, they should still be positively affected by it.

Proposals & Other Direct Communication

When writing effective proposals, you are still attempting to solve the prospective clients real problem. Little changes in this regard. However, you must be willing to accept when you’ve landed too far outside of the bracketed zone of ideal clients. Again, this aspect of bracketing clients is more of an art.

Think about what will happen over time as contracts pile up on your “permanent record” within Upwork. Continuing with our example of the graphic designer targeting lawn-care businesses, it will be difficult to appeal to your niche if the completed contracts start to enumerate with titles too far out of scope:

• “Graphic designer for toy store”

• “Email designer”

• “Need Virtual Assistant for 3 months”

It’s not impossible to escape this ipso facto “permanent record,” but it will be difficult to explain why there are so many odd jobs when claiming to specialize in design work for lawn-care businesses. Be ready to leave a contract (and money) on the table as short-term sacrifice for your long-term success. Not everyone’s personal situation will allow for avoiding an otherwise good contract, but it has to be thoughtfully considered if implementing a client bracketing strategy. Remember, the strategy is considered advanced.

Specify First, Then Bracket

The author debated on whether or not to even release this blog article because the subject is quite abstract. We walked through it from an analogy, to theory, and finally to a practical application with the use of an example. What needs to be reiterated is that bracketing clients is only going to be successful after specifying the target niche first. Otherwise, you’re not bracketing - you’re just putting a fancy name on “marketing to everyone.” There is an enormous difference.