User Experience Design in the freelance market

With the exception of a few super savvy companies and progressive teams inside groups that are investing in this specialized skill, do you feel that from the perspective of gaining clients for UX professionals it makes sense yet to market yourself as a user experience designer? Perhaps it is my locale, but I find that most clients looking for this type of work don't quite know it as that, and therefore aren't researching such terms. Unfortunately, this results in your competitors taking the ground from you, even if you truly have a unique and more effective skill set and perspective for their business goals.

I feel that UX design internally at companies or creative/design groups in certain industries look for that, but from a business consulting perspective it's important to keep in mind that UX may be seen more as a solution to their problem and not what they think they need initially (resulting in missing out completely in a perceived match).

This goes to show how important it is to know what audience you're designing for; down to the content. I have played with the idea of turning this site into a UX portfolio, but for now that specialty and experience speak will mostly stay in my blog. The mentality of many who need UX design support is still at the deliverable level. The idea is tempting to completely switch it up and test my theory - perhaps I'm totally missing out on people searching for UX consulting needs for their business.

Looking forward to a day where more people search for expertise on solutions than the solution itself. Their business would be in better shape too. Just sayin.