Top Places to Find New Clients as a Designer
You’ve got the space on your calendar to bring on some new clients, but now you’re wondering: where in the world do I find new people to work with? We’ve got some great tips for you to start your search. Read on.
One of the top questions we get asked is: “Where do I find good clients?” And we get it. It’s so hard to find those clients who are so dreamy that you just want to clone them. It might take some digging around but here are some of our favourite places for finding those client unicorns.
Where to Find New Design Clients
🏀 Dribbble freelance project board
Dribbble offers an entire feature dedicated to freelance projects (instead of hiring for roles). This is a paid board but is worthwhile for finding consistent leads - we love it!
When times are a little slower, it might be worth the monthly fee to upgrade your Dribbble account to a Pro plan so you get access to the freelance board AND your profile is highlighted more often in searches.
🖇️ LinkedIn
When you head to the website, try searching for keywords in posts to find who might be looking for a designer or a design agency. Because LinkedIn is often geared towards full-time roles, you can use search terms like “contract” or “freelance” to narrow your search to more suited job postings.
It’s also worthwhile to do just a general search of the whole platform for “freelance design jobs,” “freelance designer needed”…etc.
Good ol’ Google is your friend when looking for new clients. Use keywords in quotes and filter by date to get more relevant results. This will help you find the most recent mentions on the interwebs.
📋 Behance.net job board
When you get to Behance, click the Jobs button at the top of the page to check out all of the design positions needed. Again, this is best if you narrow your search with keywords like “contract” or “freelance” so you don’t have to search for a needle in a haystack.
👯♀️ Ask your current (favourite) clients!
We know it is tough sometimes to ask for help. But this really works well. Reach out to your favourite clients directly. Tell them you loved working with them and ask if they know anyone else equally as awesome because you have some time in your schedule to take on a project or two. You’ll be surprised by how willing people are to help you when they support your work!
👩💻 Work with current clients…AGAIN
Just because you’ve wrapped up a project with a client, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road for the 2 of you. In fact, we know that keeping a current client is a lot easier, cheaper and less effort than finding new ones. They already trust you! Remind your favourite clients of the other services you can do for them beyond when their project wraps up!
Offer ongoing support services, monthly retainer rates, or service days and get creative. Share with them the specific tasks you could help with! For example, if your client is a wedding photographer and you’ve just finished their branding, give them a price list for ongoing support and remind them that you can work on things like:
a price menu/PDF designed in their branding
social media promo graphics to launch their new brand
a thank-you card
…etc.
💻 Slack groups
This one might be surprising, but it’s quite effective. Find some communities you can join where you either network with other designers and share referrals, or groups of people who might be in the business of hiring you! Where are your ideal clients hanging out? Guaranteed if you do some digging, there’s a Slack community specific to their interests!
Once you have all those new, amazing clients, WillowSpace is here to support you.
You’re in the business of great design. We’re in the business of outstanding client relationship management. We make it seamless and beautiful to create on-brand proposals, contracts, invoices, and more so you can get back to what you do best.
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