How to Find Freelance Clients – 5 Actionable Tips

When you’re a service-based business, the goal is to find clients. And when a project is ending and you don’t have another lined up, panic mode can set in. Instead of freaking out, it’s important to be strategic in these moments so you aren’t feeling or looking desperate for new work. Here are five actionable steps you can take to find freelance clients for your business.

Here are five actionable tips for how to get new freelance clients for your business

1. Post on Social Media

Seems obvious, right? And you’re probably already doing it. The key here is to have a VERY clear strategy for writing posts to encourage new leads.

A nice general rule to follow is three posts per week.

1. One post is providing free, valuable content – educate, entertain, or both!

2. The second is some sort of ‘get to know you’ post.

3. Finally, a ‘sales’ post, telling people what you offer and that you are taking clients. With your sales posts, make sure you are VERY clear on what is the ‘next step’ action you want them to take and tell them how to do it. Schedule a call? Fill out a form? Send you a DM?

2. Reach Out to Past Clients

If you’ve been in business a while, you probably have past clients you can reach out to. (Let’s stick to the ones we had a good client engagement with!) Ask if they would consider or have a need to work together again. If not, you can also ask if they know of anyone else that might need your services. If so, be sure to get that person’s contact information so you can reach out to them directly.

Bonus Tip:

It’s also a good idea to keep an ‘OH SHIT’ list. AKA a spreadsheet with a running list of people who you can reach out to when you’re looking for new work. This list can include past clients, people who have expressed interest in working with you in the past, or even word of mouth referrals from friends or clients. “Oh my cousin owns X business and he could really use your services!” Interesting – log that into your spreadsheet for those moments when you’re in panic mode.

3. Ask Your Business Friends for Overflow Work

Pretty self-explanatory – reach out to your biz friends! Which of your friends seem to be really busy and just killing it? What are you really skilled at and how could you use that skill to help your friend? Maybe it could even become an ongoing partnership. The key here is to be upfront about your short-term and long-term goals so everyone is on the same page.

4. Facebook Entrepreneur Groups

The first step is finding good Facebook groups that correlate with your services.

Here are a few I’m in:

• Freelancing Females Facebook Group
• The Rising Tide Society Facebook Group
• The Designer Collective Facebook Group

When you’re reaching out to your friend for overflow work, it would be a good idea to ask them for recommendations of good Facebook groups to join. Some of these are invite-only, so maybe they could invite you!

Once you’ve joined a few that work for you, set notifications for new posts in those groups so you can keep an eye out for listings in your field. When you find a job that’s perfect for you, apply! Go above and beyond to make it easy for them to get to know you, your work, and the next steps of working with you.

5. Cold Email/Call Businesses

Again, be VERY strategic about this.

1. Think about the type of businesses that you would like to work with and would be most in need and could afford your services. Search for those industries on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

2. It’s awesome if you can start with people who are an acquaintance or you have a mutual friend with. Even if you have no relationship with this person, find some way to make a personal connection. Do you both love ukelele? Or have a shared value of work-life balance?

3. When you find a person that is a good fit, send them a SHORT email about what drew you to their business and how you think you could help them.

4. Make it a 1-2 punch. After the email, you can follow up with either a call/voicemail, LinkedIn message, FB or IG voice message, etc. Don’t reiterate what you already said, simply say something like – “I just sent you an email to see if you were interested in ___. I would love to connect and see if you’d be interested in working together.”

See my example below of a cold email I sent to a local small business.

Well there you have it, five actionable techniques I have used (and so can you) to find freelance clients for my business.

 

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