You got the passion, ambition and the skills to jumpstart your graphic designing career however, you come across an issue.
No matter what you do, who you talk to and where you go you just can't find people willing to buy your services. You look at other graphic designers selling their services for up to $100 to $400 per design and think to yourself, you can do so much better than them but still clients keep on going to them other than coming to you.
This makes you frustrated and you search on google How YOU can find graphic design clients.
Now, I'm assuming you have been lurking around the internet trying to find a good enough post that explains in detail how you can go from not having a single client to at least having a handful of clients.
But you're still probably confused on HOW and WHERE to start.
Now, How & Where to get Graphic Design Clients Online?
1) Facebook
Facebook is a great place to start networking and finding people of mutual interests.
Facebook is huge with roughly 2.45 billion monthly active users!
That's a good number meaning Facebook isn't dead when intending to network. Now, lets discuss how to start finding clients on the platform.
1) Join Multiple Groups on Facebook
To start, you should type in certain keywords related to graphic design, such as, "Graphic Design Clients" "Graphic Designing" "Graphic Designing Jobs" etc. And then filter for groups and start joining the ones that seem appropriate to your niche.
Try to join groups that post more than 10 times a day on average as those are the most active meaning you have an increased chance of being notified when a job of your nature is available.
By joining Groups on Facebook, your feed would start looking like a open notice board for clients. There are going to be tons of people on Facebook posting jobs requiring services of some kind.
Now, you have to convert these people into paying clients. How do you do that?
Firstly, you need to read the application carefully as usually the client has mentioned exactly what he/she wants and how to contact them.
If you ignore this and start promoting yourself in the comments of the ad post, you're not going anywhere.
Read the instructions and address how you can solve their issue for them and contact them through the mentioned way (Email, Inbox, Whatsapp etc.) Then send them your cover letter, your portfolio link, and how much you would charge.
2) Promote yourself by running ads
This method might cost you some money, if that's not your cup of tea, you can skip ahead but this investment will be worth it.
By running Facebook ads you can promote yourself and your services and the Facebook algorithm will automatically show your ad to people who might be the most interested in your services.
Now, you may not be able to reach clients directly but you will reach a lot of people and they can further refer you to some of their friends or family who may need a Graphic Designer for their brand or business.
3) Connect with your Audience
As tempting as it may be to spam ad posts with your expertise it's not ideal if you want to have good credibility and good credibility is very attractive to your clients when looking for a graphic designer.
You have to make yourself known in the industry, so people recognize you for personality and skills.
This means interacting with people without the intent to only promote your services (you can do that later) and build good personal relationships.
On Facebook this means reacting to posts, commenting on posts, giving advice to people or help them with their queries and posting yourself.
By interacting not only do you seem genuine but you are also judged by the way you interact e.g. if you are known in certain FB Groups for consistently posting funny graphic design memes you might be viewed as a fun loving person who is a casual graphic designer.
Of course you can't exactly judge a person like that but you get the point.
2) Instagram
Instagram might seem like a tricky platform for most beginners to network as they don't know how to approach or even how to start finding clients for their service.
But it's actually really simple!
1) Have an Attractive Profile
First and foremost you should keep in mind that Instagram is a visual platform so in order to grab someone's attention you need to show them your skills not tell them.
From my experience, I've noticed that on Facebook the way you communicate your message is very important and your designing skills come second whereas, on Instagram it is the opposite. Your designing skills come first and then the client wants to know more about your personality.
2) Direct Message Potential Clients
1) Using the search bar
On the search bar you can type any kind of business you might be willing to make designs for.
e.g Type in "Health & Fitness" and filter for profile. Now check out their profiles and if they have good looking designs, posts and an attractive feed it might not be worth messaging them as they may not require graphic design services. But if you find a profile in which you can work your magic, you got yourself a potential client.
Message them privately and address the issues you may have found in their designs such as, Poor layout, dull colors, poor legibility or use of colors etc. And emphasize on the importance of improving them and how you could help them.
2) Checking sponsored posts on your feed
You may have come across a handful of sponsored posts on your feed maybe a local burger joint just opened up or a small coffee shop promoting their brand. If their designs lacks quality go to their profile and shoot them a message.
This method usually has a better conversion rate as these people take their brand seriously enough to promote it and since they are spending money on ads they might as well spare an extra few bucks on making their ads look attractive in order to attract more customers
3) LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the most popular B2B Social Media Platform.
It is also great for people starting out with networking as it provides great organic growth and traffic.
On LinkedIn you might be able to see a lot of people posting and applying for jobs.
From my experience I have seen 2 ways in which people find jobs on LinkedIn. Through connections and through job listings
1) Connections
You might be familiar with the term, "Followers" on various social media channels however on LinkedIn other than followers you have Connections.
After you are done with setting up your profile you will automatically be recommended to connect with people relevant to your industry, in your case that might mean other Graphic Designers.
Send these people requests to connect with them this will start building up your network. Comment, like and share their posts and they might do the same for you slowly you'll start to get recognized more.
After getting recognized and building good relationships you can post about your skills, portfolio, experience etc. and make yourself available for hiring. If people already know what your like, your personality, the way you work etc. They might seem more at ease while hiring you.
If not your post maybe one of your connections might make themselves available for hiring which means their actively looking for people to recruit, so you can message them directly.
2) Job Listings
Second way of finding jobs on LinkedIn is by going to the jobs section and looking at job openings regarding your position, Graphic design.
The great thing about LinkedIn is that you can set up alerts for when a job is available, which means LinkedIn will send you an email notifying you about a job available for you.
When a job is available you can apply to it, LinkedIn makes it easy to apply as it automatically converts your profile in a pdf resume to send to recruiters.
Conclusion
We looked at how to find graphic design clients through various social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn keeping in mind that you reading this are already a Graphic Designer just confused on where to find clients that are willing to pay for your services.
The basics of networking covered included joining FB Groups, Messaging Potential Clients on Instagram and finding job listings on LinkedIn.
There are many other ways to find graphic design clients but this post was targeted towards beginners who want to get their first few sales in order to get the ball rolling.
