As a freelance creative, you sink or swim on your own merits and hard work. The more effort you put into your business, the bigger it will be, the longer your list of clients and the more money you will make doing it. Many freelancers are often unaware of the amount of work it takes to create and grow a successful business, but a great number of people are also unaware of what kinds of strategies and tools are out there to help them on their journey. Below are some of the ways you can grow your business as a freelance creative.
Your Project Onboarding Process
There are many freelance creatives who work out there, but not all are the same. To stand out from the crowd, you need to do something really very specific to make yourself unique as a freelancer.
One of the most important things is the project onboarding process.
Almost every freelance business owner sends project proposals before getting started. But not all are alike. Some use a benefit centric approach and some use results oriented approaches. But in both cases, they forget the process details, which become a hurdle for them later on the project.
So, creating a document with all details of the project, worth a shot. This is where considering a Creative Brief would be beneficial. It helps you keep all information of the project and your client in a single document. Moreover, it minimizes the chances of being played by your lenient, especially if you are working on a creative project.
Sending a creative brief and your perfect project proposal in the project onboarding, gives you a chance to stand out. This is where you can be completely transparent about the process and win your client’s trust at once.
Your Payment System
Having a streamlined and easy-to-use payment system as a freelance creative is a must. Your clients need to be able to send you money quickly and without issue, otherwise, you are going to run into a lot of problems as you try and grow. If you are a freelance photographer or graphic designer, you may sometimes find yourself participating in or putting together events and venues to showcase your work. Consider putting together a cashless payment system where you and your fellow creatives can use alternatives to currency as payment for goods and services rendered.
Invest in Prospecting
If you are on your own as a freelance creative, you are going to need to spend a considerable amount of time looking for work. The beauty of the freelance lifestyle is that you get to work completely on your own terms. The flip side is that you have to spend a lot of time pursuing work in order to keep your business financially viable. Prospecting is something that is often done en masse, which means sending out large numbers of emails that are usually in template form but with enough personalization done to make them unique to each reader.
You could send out all of those emails on your own, or you could invest in a service like Mail Chimp or Mailshake, which lets you create customized and automated email campaigns that can be sent out to large prospect lists. The freelance creative market is heavily saturated, which means to stay ahead of the game, you need to be constantly trying to reach a wider audience and larger market than your competitors.
Stay Building Your Portfolio
The thing that separates your average Behance creative from the rest is most often a well-curated portfolio. This means both a personal website with a dedicated portfolio section, as well as an Instagram profile that doubles as one. The number of people that will pass you over as a professional simply because you have not made your work and successful projects front and center on your social media and website should be enough to make any freelance creative think twice about skipping out on this.
Every time you create something for a client, or even if it is something you have created on your own, showcase it in your portfolio. You don’t need to put absolutely everything you do in your portfolio, especially if you do a lot, but it should ideally be multiple pages and categorized by the different services you offer and/or niches you work in.
Testimonials and Reviews
Many freelance creatives, after a while, start to get by on referral work alone. This means they are able to survive just off word of mouth. While this is certainly a nice situation to be in, it is not the reality for most people, and social signals, comments and reviews from satisfied past and current clients are necessary for sealing the deal with new ones. The average person trusts a good review almost as much as they trust recommendations from people they know, so making sure you are getting these social cues is paramount.
Some people are nice enough to leave you a positive comment after you have completed something for them without being prompted, but others need incentivization. Sometimes a simple ask in a follow-up email is enough to get someone to go out of their way to leave you a comment, while other people need the promise of reward or discount.
SEO and Digital Marketing
If you are trying to take your business from a referral and word-of-mouth-based operation to one that is consistently getting new clients through organic traffic to your website, you will need to spend time and money on putting the necessary SEO pieces in place. Your search engine optimization is what will ultimately give you that stable, sustainable, long-term growth, and while it represents an entirely different facet of your business, it is something that you will eventually need to either pay for or do on your own.
All small businesses, whether you are a freelance creative or otherwise, must accept the fact that SEO is the most cost-effective way forward. However, it should be noted that it is not without its pitfalls. You will need to take the time to educate yourself about how the Google algorithm works so that you can make informed decisions and employ a strategy that gets results.
An Extra Step To Elevate Your Business
Once you start getting long term clients approaching you everyday, think of creating a micro agency. Hire best freelancers from all over the globe or even from your country to take one step further in your business growth.
Once you settled your team and a workflow of projects, move forward with forming an LLC. LLC has many benefits especially if you are in the United States. You will get the protection of a corporation with comparatively less expense.
There are many freelance creatives, who started the journey alone and now have become a family of many employees. So, if you want to take one step further to your business growth, incorporate your business with a reputable LLC service provider.
Conclusion
Growing your business as a freelance creative is a grind, but it is one that is well worth it. With some elbow grease and an understanding of the digital marketing fundamentals, you can take your business from word-of-mouth and the occasional referral and recommendation to constant requests from new clients and so much work that you might have to consider hiring an assistant or perhaps starting your own agency.
