Find Good Clients

Thousands of service buyers complain of poor quality work from freelancers and design agencies every year; often to the point that reputations are ruined and the design industry as a whole suffers. From disappearing service providers to fly-by-night scam artists, the online world is packed with opportunities for things to go wrong, and it’s really not surprising that so many online and offline entrepreneurs have a bad impression of freelancers and one-off designers.

The good news is that, with enough planning and marketing direction, you don’t have to work for clients that are frustrating and difficult.

Here are some strategies that will help you refine your freelancing business and personal marketing to the point where you’re choosing clients; not them choosing you.

Get your planning book out, file a new page for marketing, and incorporate these tactics into your new client acquisition strategy.

1.  Search by Yourself

Searching for great clients can take time, but the satisfaction that comes from a low-maintenance client base is fantastic.

It’s one thing to put up an advertisement on a popular website, and another altogether to respond to someone else’s. While it’s typically unwise to respond to advertisements for service work – primarily since you’re often forced to work on the clients terms for payment and scheduling – it’s occasionally a great strategy for picking out clients and saving yourself the hassle of having to say "no".

Most webmaster forums will feature a website that’s packed with design-related jobs, and although wages are typically pretty low, they’re often a good place to start building up your portfolio and acquiring clients on your terms. If you’re catering to a higher-end market, a number of local directories and design-related websites typically offer job leads or other design contracts.

2.  Create a Great Web Presence

Without directions and instructions, how are your clients going to find you?

You’ve built a website, done some basic SEO work, and now you’re stuck waiting for clients to come to you. The only problem: they aren’t coming.

A basic website is just that – a basic website, and it’s unlikely to attract any valuable clients to your business. While people may stumble across is from a bizarre and unrelated search result, it’s very unlikely that you’ll gain any valuable clients without your own client-driven and well-marketed website.

3.  Ask Your Current Clients for Referrals

Sometimes a single phone call from a client is enough to land a major contract.

This is the type of situation where you have to look at the advantages you have, not the potential disadvantages that only having a small stack of clients causes. Contact your best clients with an honest and important email, asking them if they know of anyone else that would be interested in working with you.

This situation can be taken to extremes, sometimes with very profitable effects. Want to really encourage your clients to get their friends working with you? Create an affiliate or referral program for your design agency, and convince past clients to bring in new ones for a small commission, discount on their next order, or special bonus. Incentives go a long way online, and sometimes something as minor as a free blog theme could bring in a new major client.

4.  Email Approach

Local clients will often like to meet in person, so get your suit and tie ready.

It’s surprising how effective an email marketing campaign can be for service business owners.

Relax, there’s no need to spam anyone, but targeting individual businesses and community companies with the offer of design services can be quite worthwhile. Many businesses want to be online, but simply don’t know how to move their business there. As a designer, you can approach them with a deal in mind, limiting their barrier to entry and maximizing your local business profits.

5.  Partnership With Others

Sometimes even the unlikeliest of partnerships can work in your favor.

There are going to be times in your life when scheduling gets completely out of control. Clients will stack up, website design requirements will tally well off the page, and work will become a major headache for you. Then again, there will also be times when clients simply aren’t contacting you, leaving you completely free of work, and unfortunately, free of income.

Realize that every service business experiences these changes from time to time, and while many don’t adapt, many others do.