Tips to gain more collaborators, clients, and opportunities in your freelance makeup artistry career…
The things that got you to where you are now are not necessarily the things that will get you to the next level. – Jasmine Star (paraphrased)
Writing a cold email…the thought sends shivers down many a makeup artists spine. And making a phone call? The Horror! (I’m not great at the phone myself). Yet outreach is a cornerstone of any solid marketing campaign. As I’ve said so many times, social media is but one part of your marketing campaign, and frankly for most people in 2024, it’s not the most effective.
The entire point of why people read/follow/study Makeup to Go is to elevate their makeup artistry career in some way, right? The Makeup to Go fam encompasses folks who are starting from absolute scratch and want to start a career as a professional makeup artist, makeup artists who have solid private client businesses who want to elevate their clientele, makeup and/or hair artists working behind the chair or at the counter who want to move into some form of an on-set/media career, it runs the gamut.
What do all of these freelance artists have in common? Everything they want is probably located on the other side of a consistent and meaningful outreach effort. So here are some thoughts (and tools!) to help you get started…
Components of a Successful Outreach Campaign
* Niche Down
* Research
* Prepare your presentation
* Polish your pitch
* Follow Up Accordingly
* Outreach Mentality
But First…
Why Outreach? And how is it different from Word of Mouth and/or referrals? Well first of all it’s not either/or. Ideally you’ll have both 👍🏾 . In my mind the distinct advantage of Outreach is both practical and mindset. On the practical level, most referrals are lateral. More often than not, clients refer to similar clients. Both in terms of types of work and in terms of rate level. So if you’re booking $150 brides, that client will likely refer you to other $150 brides. The people they refer aren’t going to suddenly want to pay $300. And unless someone in that Bridal party happens to be the Creative Director for Free People – for example – you’re not likely to suddenly get referrals to that other type of work (and even then it’s an unlikely referral but that’s a lesson for the Five Small Things Membership 😉 ). Thus if you’re trying move upwards in rate or into a different avenue of work, you need to do the legwork necessary to get there. On the mindset tip; it’s an active practice, not passive and reactive. With referrals and word-of-mouth you don’t control when it’s going to happen or for what. You’re basically just waiting for jobs to fall into your lap which does happen sometimes and that’s great. With Outreach, however, you’re steering your own ship. You are developing your own contacts to hopefully grow into your own relationships and ultimately your own jobs. 👍🏾
So let’s talk about how to do that…
1 – Niche Down
You can’t contact everyone at once. And even if you could, as you progress who you’ll want to contact and why will change. So sit down and take a minute to think about who you need/want to contact for now. Do you need to develop your portfolio? The bulk of your energies should be spent meeting photographers. Do you want to get onto better sets or to assist? You should be focusing on contacting Senior makeup artists, etc. ALSO – be realistic. Yes we all want to meet and work with Edward Enninful, but be real as to whether or not you are showing Edward Enninful caliber work… 😉
2 – Research
Folks don’t do enough research in the social media age, which is odd considering how much easier it is to do research nowadays.🤷🏾♀️
Once you’ve identified what it is you want to do first, you’ll need to spend some time making a Contact List. Again, we’re moving past the throwing pasta at the wall approach, we’re going to start being intentional in our contact and our follow up.
How do you start a Contact List? While there are a number of creative directories that professionals use (I go into this in the 5ST Membership), you can get a lot done by perusing socials and cross-referencing LinkedIn. And nowadays, for the late Millenial/Gen Z crowd, the person you’re trying to reach may prefer initial contact via Social (a LOT of people DON’T however so be mindful of that).
3 – Prepare Your Presentation
If you don’t have a website stop making excuses and just get one up. If you have one and you haven’t updated it since you first launched it, stop making excuses and just update it. LOL! I say this with love, but seriously…let’s be serious folks. Websites are super inexpensive nowadays, they’re easy to put together, and various entities from brands to organizations require one in order to qualify for pro makeup artist discounts, pro artist organization memberships, etc. AND even folks who find you on Social may want to check out a website just to make sure you’re real, so get those sites done! While you’re at it – Tighten up your socials. Make sure the links work, the contact info is correct, take down any content that doesn’t fit your brand image*, make it tight, make it right.
When it comes to your presentation you want to make yourself look as great as you possibly can anywhere someone may see you professionally. It’s ok to be a new artist. What’s NOT OK is looking unprofessional and off-point.
4 – Polish Your Pitch
No doubt about it, pitching is one of the most difficult aspects of freelancing. For most of us, constantly presenting ourselves for possible rejection does not excite. BUT reality for most of us is this is the only way we can put ourselves in a position to get put on. Someone has to know about you in order to give you a shot. And in order for them to know about you, you’ve got to reach out.
I know everyone is hoping for social media virality into stardom, but not only is that a flighty proposition, I’ve seen numerous posts from people who have gone viral who’ve said that it wasn’t all that. Yes they caught the eyes of lots of people, but they were the wrong eyes and it ultimately did little for their businesses. I’ve actually experienced a taste of that with my social media posts that have really blown up. Nice for the ego, but otherwise ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
I’m here to testify to you; it only takes ONE. ONE great client, ONE great photographer/producer/art director, ONE great agent to change your entire game. You don’t need lots of eyes to see you, you need the right eyes to see you.
BONUS For actually making it this far and actually reading this post; My Contact Script guide is available to help you. If you’re stumped on what to say and how to get started on your Outreach, give the Guide a gander. It’s Free.99!.
5 – Follow Up Accordingly
One of the WORST mistakes we all make early in our freelance entrepreneur journeys is to contact someone once and give up when we don’t hear back. If you really think about it, that’s just absurd. That’s acting as if our recipient was sitting around all day waiting for our email or call AND that’s the only item of business they had going that day.
Lol, no.
Once you reach out to someone, it is on YOU to follow up. Thusly, to this day, I like to keep track of who I contacted, what they’re role is (and at what company if applicable), the date I contacted them, and what the result was. By result I mean whether or not they responded and if so what did they say. That’s important info, because that will determine my next move. And no, I’m not a super analytical, statistics driven person at all. But I did find I needed to keep track of what happened and when, so I could know what to do next and when to do it (contacting people too frequently is a big turn-off).
Now I used to do this by hand in a spiral notebook. But for you, The Serious, who are still reading this post, I’ve got another tool for you. Click here to gain access to the Outreach Tracking Log – a pre-formatted Google Sheets spreadsheet, all ready to go, for you to start keeping track of your Outreach efforts (fear not, if you’re on the email list and you sign up for this download, you will NOT receive duplicate emails. Flodesk is good like that 👍🏾 ). Once downloaded just make a copy of it onto your own Google drive and you’re ready to go. And yes Google drive is free as part of any Google account.
6 – Outreach Mentality
For some people this is a piece of cake and they’ll reach out to anyone, any time for whatever. But for many of us – and I include myself in this – Outreach is rough. Imposter syndrome sets in. Fear of rejection sets in. You name it. There’s nothing like having to reach out to people we don’t know to send every insecurity we have into High Alert.
I’m a Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway kinda gal (affiliate link – it’s a really great mindset book). In all my years of working as a makeup artist I’ve never grown to love Outreach (I’m actually kinda shy), BUT I am the type of person that I want what I want and so I’ll just jump in and do it anyway.
Bear in mind as you start your Outreach process that this is just business. Every single working person – and certainly everyone who operates some kind of business, including freelancers – does this on a regular basis. Think about your favorite cosmetics brand; Are they shy in sending you those emails multiple times daily? No. You can either ignore the email, engage and buy, unsubscribe or whatever. But until you tell them to STOP they ‘gon keep sending you those emails!
So while I would never ever recommend contacting someone multiple times per day (or week or even month), I will say: send those emails out regularly, and with confidence. You aren’t bothering anyone, and they don’t hate you for reaching out, it’s just business.
The more you do your Outreach, the easier it becomes to do. And the more you progress in your career, the more the types of Outreach you are doing (or should be doing) will change. In a best case scenario a career is ever evolving and growing, but ya gotta start somewhere. So write those emails and start reaching out to folks!
OH – And if you want to watch the Instagram Live that inspired this post, you can click here to watch.
**Brand Image is – you guessed it – another topic covered in the Five Small Things Membership 😉
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