Whether you’re just beginning your career or you’re a seasoned graphic designer, it’s a wise idea to invest some time and energy into marketing your services.
Take a moment and ask yourself these three questions:
- Do I have a presence in the right online spaces?
- Do I feel like my web presence reflects my strengths in the best possible light?
- Am I reaching the clients I want?
If your answer to any of those questions is “Maybe,” “I don’t know,” or “No,” then it’s time for you to increase your marketing efforts. As a graphic designer, you are already intimately familiar with how marketing works. However, marketing your own services can sometimes fall by the wayside.
Three tasks you can accomplish to help you improve your own graphic design marketing are:
- Build a strong presence
- Make a contact list
- Follow up consistently
If you follow these three steps, you’ll be on the way to building a client list and doing more of the work you love.
How to Build A Strong Presence
In order to contact potential clients, you need to have something to show them. Build a website and showcase your best work on it. If you are just starting out, this could be projects you’ve done for school. If you have years of graphic design experience under your belt, it’s time to get organized and put your best work all in one place: in your online portfolio on your website.
In addition to your portfolio, your website itself is a great place to showcase your graphic design skills. Use images throughout your own website that prove you can provide a coherent brand identity. Show your personality and your professional style through the logos and images you create for your site. This is a great way to illustrate how you are different from the other graphic designers out there.
Once you have a website, you need to connect it to your professional social media accounts. If you don’t have any, it’s time to create them. Once you have those accounts, use them to promote your website and your services. For instance, you can tweet about a project that you’re proud of, that’s easy marketing content for your Twitter feed that could reach potential clients.
Make a Contact List
Now it’s time to decide who you want to work with. You already know what kind of work you’re naturally drawn to and what you’re good at – these are the projects you’ve enjoyed the most. Reach out to people in those fields through LinkedIn or over email. Pitch them your idea for how you could improve their web presence or their print products that feature graphic design. Make it clear that you really want to work with them and that you have great ideas that will improve their product marketing.
When you reach out to potential clients, you should show them examples of your best work; however, you can also show them your works-in-progress. You can share details with your client about your process and showcase your graphic design skills at different stages. Emphasize how you will always put the client’s needs first. Eventually, if you are a skilled designer, you will start to build your client list and find work.
Follow Up Consistently
Once you’ve connected with a client, it’s important to stay connected to them. That means that, even if you’re in the middle of a project for Client A, you should take some time to follow up with Client B and answer their questions. This is important because, once you’re finished with Client A, you’ll need more work. It’s a lot to manage, so think about scheduling yourself a set amount of time every day – such as thirty minutes – to follow up with clients who you believe you’d work well with.
Once you’re finished with the project for Client A, it’s always a good idea to approach them later on, remind them of the successful graphic design you did for them, and see if they have any upcoming projects. Past clients are an excellent source of work – if you’ve done the job well.
While you’re following up, you should ask your past clients if they will provide testimonials for your website. This is a great way to build your credibility and prove to other potential clients that you can fulfill their graphic design needs.
In Conclusion
At the end of the day, building a strong presence, making a contact list, and following up consistently with potential clients are important for your success. Following these steps will help you market yourself as a graphic designer who can produce quality work for clients that represents them in their best light. Without consistently working on your own web presence, you won’t be able to work on images for clients, so make sure you’re marketing yourself!