Editor’s Note: Design business expert David C. Baker offers 4 strategies for how to get new clients for your digital design agency. This article is excerpted from HOWdesign.com.
You aren’t afraid of hard work or even great expense in figuring out how to get new clients. You just don’t want either your time or your money to be wasted. I don’t have all the answers to this dilemma, but I do have the benefit of taking a deep look inside 650+ design firms in the past 18 years, and that naturally equips me with certain advantages.
Yes, you need a marketing plan for your web design agency, though something that will fit on the front and back of one napkin will work fine. Yes, you need marketing materials for communicating with design clients. Yes, one person needs to be charged with making this plan happen.
But there are four things that will do more than anything else in making you successful at figuring out how to get new clients. If these four things are present at your design firm, you’d actually have to work very hard not to succeed at finding new clients.
Finding new clients for your web design firm
- You need a compelling positioning statement—one that’s unique, memorable and distinguishing.
- You need personal confidence—believe your digital design agency is different, that your work is great, and clients will relax.
- You need connections—with clients, former clients, vendors, supporters, friends.
- You need to be intimately involved with the process of finding new clients—as principal of an interactive design agency, you should be personally engaged in new business development.
Read the full article to get more of David C. Baker’s advice on how to generate new business for your web design firm.
More business resources for web designers
- Interactive Business Development Bootcamp—a two-week online course aimed squarely at interactive designers. Learn proposal writing, pricing and more; taught by Ilise Benun.
- The Digital Creative’s Survival Guide—everything you need to know to build a successful career in web design, mobile, animation, video and more; written by Paul Wyatt.
- How to Make More Money as a Designer in 2013—live design tutorial on October 18
