clients for your graphic design business.
Top 15 Ways to get Graphic Design Clients for your Business
Are you a beginner in graphics designing and are looking for ways to get clients for your business? If you are, then this post will be helpful to you.
You might not know ways or have any clue on how to get or what it takes to find clients.
Here are valuable tips to get clients for your graphics design business:
- Join freelance platforms and other local community of graphics designers
- Be active and committed
- Locate where clients are already at
- Use cold outreach through emails and phone call
- Attract graphic design clients to your workstation
- Build your portfolio for client and optimize it for conversation
- Expand you network
- Work with other freelancers in your field
- Create diverse events and make yourself known
- Start for free and do charity work
- Partner with a freelancer
- Avail yourself to people and let them know you’re looking for work
- Ask for referrals
- Contact your previous clients
- Hold and host your own event
How to get Graphic Design Clients for your Business
- Join freelance platforms and other local community of graphics designers
As a graphics designer, you can sign up in different freelance platforms to get clients remotely and also join communities to get clients for your business.
The quickest and easiest way to get graphics design clients to hire you is to sign up in freelance platforms.
There are various freelance platforms available that connect you with clients like Up work, Fiverr, and 99design.
- Be active and committed
As graphics designer, you can approach brands and agencies you would like to work for, even in your community.
You can spot a design of companies that need rebranding and as a proactive designer you can meet the owner and share your intentions of rebranding the design and go in an agreement with the client.
You can also reach out to clients you have worked for or any company you freelanced for some time in the past and indicate your interest in working for them again.
- Locate where clients are already at
A tactic used in finding clients is to learn where to get them, that is, where they usually hang out. It can be online or offline.
On offline, you can meet clients that deal on illustrations and that use graphics design to promote their work, such as media organizations that broadcast with illustrations.
You can also meet clients on freelance platforms.
- Use cold outreach through emails and phone call
Sending of cold mail is said to be dead and outdated, however, it still works as good as it can.
You can cold call and send emails to clients to let them know you can help with marketing design or any other type of graphic designer that you have to offer.
You can still get tons of new clients every time you send cold emails.
- Attract graphic design clients to your workstation
As a graphics designer, what you create matters a lot for the success of your business. The more you make attractive designs, the more you will have clients seeking you.
Being creative draws new potential graphics design clients to you.
- Build your portfolio for client and optimize it for conversation
Your portfolio should not only be the only place to show off your work, it is also a place where you convert site visitors into prospective clients.
You should optimize your portfolio to be able to connect with prospective clients and enable them to make inquiries and have a conversion with you.
Your portfolio is not only for sampling of pretty and perfect designs.
- Expand you network
It is essential to market and grow your network, the more you grow your network, the more you get referrals from different clients.
As a beginner, you don’t sit at home and expect clients to come to you, you have to get out there and meet people.
It’s just part of the business. You can attend conferences and other social gatherings and share your business card and devise other means to market you brand, so as to get prominent clients.
As a freelance graphics designer marketing is also important, you will need to build your network in order to advance and find new clients and more work.
- Work with other freelancers in your field
Other freelancers are not necessarily your competitors; actually they are your community.
Introduce yourself and establish a rapport with them, show them how helpful you are, make an industrial peer connection with them and offer to help them with their workloads and ask for referrals to clients if any of their clients seeks for a graphic design that you specialize in.
There are many networking events on websites and offline to help you get clients.
- Create diverse events and make yourself known
Apart from working on your craft, you can start other diverse contents such as blogs or a YouTube channel to help get followers and clients and make a name for yourself.
Some graphic design businesses focus their content only on a particular platform, thereby missing out on opportunities from potential clients in other platforms.
- Start for free and do charity work
Working for free leads to criticisms, which diminishes your value in the market, but it is also feasible if you have other jobs that pay but want to start a career as a graphics designer.
Build your portfolio, purse, and utilize any opportunity you get as a graphics beginner.
When working for free you have to be strategic and see it as an opportunity to draw clients to your workstation.
Also, remember to tell them how much your normal charge is for a job and perform the job diligently. They will be pleased that you did the job for free, and if you delivered an alluring design, they will call you back and pay you for your next project.
- Partner with a freelancer
Partner with a freelancer that works in the same field as you and has the same designer skills as you.
You can work together on the same projects and offer a better solution to the project for the client.
Working as a duo is not a bad idea; both of you can get as much clients as possible and combine your creative abilities to give the project the best look, thereby making the client to refer back to you if they want another design to be done.
- Avail yourself to people and let them know you’re looking for work
Apart from sending cold emails, and reaching out to people manually, it’s important to update all of your online profile like LinkedIn.
This is how some people get their first client and it can also make an impact on the subsequent clients after the first one.
Also, be specific on the area of your specialization in graphics designing, indicate your title as “Logo Designer” or any services you offer and explain what exactly you can do for your clients.
- Ask for referrals
You can ask for referrals from your family members, current and past clients and people you meet at different networking events that have interest in your work but might not need it for themselves.
They can refer you to other graphics design clients that need your services.
- Contact your previous clients
Some clients might have stopped using your services due to misunderstanding or some other reasons, maybe they experienced a down turn in their business or they wanted to try new designers.
As a graphics designer seeking clients for your business, you should reach out to them to see how they’re doing and bring to their knowledge that you’re still available to work for their businesses.
- Hold and host your own event
Host your own networking event; you can speak and also invite other speakers to give you credit as a great graphics designer to work with.
By this strategy, you can gather different prospective clients who are your target audience.
Take charge of this opportunity and teach about the premium services you render and make sure you captivate the audience’s attention about the wonderful work that you do, and how you will carry out their jobs with utmost expertise if they give you an opportunity.
This is one of the best ways of meeting people and prominent clients.
Conclusion
Getting clients for your graphic design business doesn’t have to be an activity that consumes time, neither do you have to spend much money on ads frequently.
When it comes to getting clients for your business as a designer, it is all about building mutual relationship with your online or offline clients, and also carrying out your duties in a professional way to show your value and expertise in the field.
By doing so, you’ll always wake up every morning with new gigs in your brief.