The staff at a Georgia animal shelter was starting to worry about Paul Anka.
Paul (no relation to the singer and songwriter) is a beautiful pit bull mix. Playful, fun, very loving.
But after nine months in the shelter, no one had adopted him. For some reason, potential adopters were overlooking his loving spirit in favor of other dogs.
That’s when a staff member had an idea. She dressed Paul in pajamas and posted this adorable video, offering to allow someone to take him home for the night to give him a try.
The video almost broke the Internet!
Within minutes, the shelter started receiving dozens of inquiries about Paul. A family quickly arrived and took Paul home for the night. They called the shelter the next morning with an update. They couldn’t believe that Paul had been at the shelter for so long. And they asked if he could stay longer.
The next day the family called back to say they wanted to adopt him.
Since then, this busy shelter has continued its pajama tradition, posting on Facebook pictures and videos of their longer-term residents in PJ’s or costumes.
As you can see from the pictures below, they’re hard to resist. And they’re driving hundreds of Atlanta residents to the shelter to adopt a pet.
It’s working!
Photo credit: Kaitlyn Garrett/LifeLine Animal Project
Photo credit: Kaitlyn Garrett/LifeLine Animal Project
Their posts on Facebook have massive engagement within hours of appearing. (And on a personal note, it’s precisely these pictures and videos that drove my family and me to adopt our second dog from this shelter last year.)
This is not a new idea. An online wine retailer I sometimes buy from writes a fascinating, one-page story about every wine they offer. Check out this sample below:
It’s remarkable how they can take a wine that might normally fail to get anyone’s attention and sell out their allocation in a matter of hours—simply by telling the colorful story behind the wine.
Your local grocery store does the same thing when they place a product on an endcap. Have you ever noticed how much those chocolate chip cookies or pita chips? (I haven’t noticed. I’m just asking.)
And heck, who can forget that famous scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles when John Candy “positioned” his shower curtain rings as designer earrings in order to raise cash for a bus ticket. (Although there’s no need to deceive for this idea to work.)
How You Can Swipe This Strategy
So what does this have to do with landing freelance work quickly, you ask?
It has everything to do with it. Because there’s a good chance that by trying something similar, you could drum up work quickly.
No, I’m not talking about posting a picture of you in your PJ’s on Facebook or LinkedIn. That would be creepy.
I’m talking about highlighting one of your offerings. But doing it a bit differently.
Here’s what I mean. You’re probably offering a variety of writing services to your clients. And when you land work, it’s typically because you reached out to a prospect at just the right time or your client needed something and contacted you directly.
But how often are you “putting pajamas” on one of your key services and promoting that particular offering to your prospects and clients?
Here are some examples:
- Do you offer white paper plans? Then why not highlight that particular offering (and why it’s awesome for the client) in social media or in your newsletter this month?
- Do you offer a website audit service? Why not write a brief case study of how you recently helped a client drive higher conversions as a direct result of your findings and recommendations?
- Do you offer a branding makeover service? A content marketing strategy session? An explainer video package? A content writing bundle? Here again, why not pick one service this month and “put PJ’s” on it by highlighting exactly how it could help your clients or telling the backstory of how it came about?
You’d be amazed at how highlighting a particular service in this manner will spark ideas in your clients’ minds—and how quickly you’ll get qualified inquiries about the service you’re featuring.
You could do this with just about any service you offer. But I’ve found that front-end “productized” services tend to work best.
Productized services are prepackaged offerings with a well-defined scope and a fixed price. And they are easy to highlight because they’re typically easier to describe than other, more customized, offerings. (By the way, if you’re a member of my Get Better Clients Academy, we’re about to publish an execution plan on how to offer productized services. Stay tuned!)
Here’s my challenge to you: give this a try in the next few weeks. Create a simple page on your website that describes one of your core services and what it will do for your clients, especially if you offer a productized version of that service.
If you publish a newsletter, highlight an offering in your next issue. Or send a solo promotional email with the offer.
Do you have a case study of how this service helped a client? Or is there an interesting story behind this offering? Maybe there’s a more compelling way to present the concept behind this service—something your prospects don’t realize.
If so, tell that story or highlight that angle!
Don’t have a mailing list? Email current and past clients individually with a very short message and a link to the page highlighting this service.
I think you’ll be surprised by your results.
