Getting Freelance Web Design Clients: My Top 3 Strategies

  by Kyle Prinsloo      Last updated Sep 29, 2022

Without clients, you don’t have a freelancing business - you have a hobby.

In this article, I discuss my top 3 ways to get clients so you can have more freedom and have a successful freelancing business.

Let’s get into it!

🎥 Prefer watching? Here’s the video:

There are hundreds of ways to get clients, like:

• Friends & Family
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
• Instagram Ads
• LinkedIn Ads
• Radio Ads
• Newspaper Ads
• Podcast Ads
• Building A Brand On Social Media
• And more…

I talk about these in my article: How To Get Clients As A Freelance Developer.

But in this article, I’ll share my top 3:

1. SEO
2. Outreach
• Cold Email
• Cold Outreach (Twitter DM, LinkedIn DM, FB DM)
• Google Maps
• Google Rankings
3. Agencies

SEO

If someone types in a targeted search term that can result in more clients, you want your website show up on Google.

Examples:

• “Editor X developer”
• “WordPress developer X city”
• “Web designer X city”
• “Web design for X niche”
• “Marketing agency X city”
• “Marketing agency for X niche”
• “SEO for X niche”

These websites basically get free clients every single month.

Why?

Because they were intentional about SEO.

They created targeted landing pages for each keyword.

And if your clients are local, you could create a Google map.

Outreach

What do I mean by this?

All the activities to proactively reach out to people in the hope they will become a client.

This includes:

• Cold Email
• Cold Outreach (Twitter DM, LinkedIn DM, FB DM)
• Google Maps
• Google Rankings

Cold Email

Here’s an 80/20 overview:

1. You start with a list of leads
2. You email your leads
3. You convince the client to sign up
4. They sign up or they don’t

1.) How To Get Leads:

I use FindThatLead.

You can search for leads via niche, city, company size, and more.

2.) Email Your Leads:

I use LemList.

It automates the first email with follow-ups, and you get helpful analytics data.

Here's a guideline first email template:

Social Media Outreach

By social media outreach, I’m referring to sending a message to a prospective client on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Example:

Niche: Course creators.

Give feedback to improve their landing page (for free).

See if anything comes from it.

I did that with a prospect. He wanted to pay me $500 as a thank you.

I declined.

6 months later I pitched him a $2,500 /mo marketing retainer and he signed up.

So ideally, you want to be as personable as possible and research your prospects well before engaging with them, but as a guideline, you can send this message:

Google Maps Outreach

One of my favourites.

Type in a search term:

• Landscapers in X city
• Painters in X city
• Architects in X city
• Brick pavers X city
• Deck installers X city

Look at the Google maps.

If they have bad reviews or a low count of reviews, it’s a great opportunity to reach out to them.

As a general guideline to reach out to them, you can say this:

Google Rankings Outreach

It follows exactly the same strategy as the Google Maps outreach strategy.

You search for a term, look at websites ranking at the bottom of the first page or the second page, and you reach out to them with a similar message.

Agencies

Finally, it’s an easy one, but often overlooked.

Many web design and marketing agencies are looking for freelancers to partner with when they have a lot of work coming in and they don’t want to commit to a full-time hire.

So all it requires is them being aware of you and your work and if they like what they see, they’ll sub-contract work to you.

Just make sure you have a good portfolio with experience, then reach out to agencies with a general email like this:

Notes:

Although it’s a number’s game, it’s important to qualify your leads. 100 qualified leads are better than 1,000 random leads.

If you REALLY want to convert a client, know that it takes time. The best way to do this is to avoid automation and make it personable - build a relationship with them.

Don’t give up so easily. It does take time, but you’ll get better at it, and it also gets easier.

If you’d like more help and advice, I have a freelancing bundle that will help you:

• get clients
• charge for your services
• niche down
• and more

It basically covers everything you need to know on how to start and run a freelancing business.

You can join over 5,000 students here.

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That’s it from me, hope you found this valuable 🙂

And if you’re interested in building websites using a drag-and-drop builder, consider using Editor X - it’s my favorite nocode web building platform.

I also have a free 600+ member community for web designers & developers interested in freelancing.
Join us here.

Cheers for now,

-Kyle