2023 Clients by Job Title

I love digging into my freelance business data. I started a couple of years ago when I wanted to figure out my best source of client leads. Besides referrals, I discovered that LinkedIn was my hottest spot for gaining new clients, and that’s when I really started posting and optimizing my profile.

[Read my blog post: LinkedIn for Freelancers]

As I begin to review my 2023 data, I decided to look at the job titles of the clients I work with. I plan to use this information to expand my cold outreach on LinkedIn. From time to time, I connect with editors at publications I’d love to write for. But it hasn’t been a huge priority for me.

So I’m taking a look at which people actually make the hiring decisions at publications, agencies, and companies that I work with - and I encourage you to do the same.

Here are some benefits of taking the time to go through this process:

🔥 You can better identify people to connect with on social media or email

🔥 You can see how diverse (or not) your client work load is

🔥 You can reflect on which content models you love working on and which ones are less inspiring

This exercise takes just a few minutes. I spent about 15 minutes looking up job titles from my 2023 clients and here’s what I found.

My 2023 Clients By Job Title (#1 surprised me!)

This is rounded math, but here’s the general breakdown of job titles and percentages.

*Quick note on methodology: I just used the flat number of clients as a basis for these percentages. If I wanted to do a more in-depth risk assessment of my work, I would also calculate these percentages based on the portion of my income each client accounts for.

Now back to the exciting part… the results.

Marketing manager/director: 29%

Content director: 22%

Editorial manager: 22%

Lead editor: 22%

SEO strategist: 1%

I was surprised that the most common job title among my clients is marketing manager, accounting for about 29%! Although if I were to combine “editorial manager” and “lead editor” into one category, that would account for 44% of my clients’ job titles.

But I wanted to get a little more granular so I have a better understanding of who to connect with at companies and publishers. This will inform my 2024 strategy as I think about the dream clients I want to chase after!

How about you? Any client you’d love to write for next year? Can you find any data in your current clients to help you connect?

As always, happy freelancing,

Lauren

When you’re ready, here are 2 ways I can help you with your freelance business:

1. Organize your business with my income tracker or pitch tracker.

2. Read The Fully Booked Freelance Writer to follow my exact process for keeping a full schedule (whatever that looks like for you).