How to Consistently Get Clients for Your Design Business

1. Class intro: Hi and welcome to the skill share course on how to get design clients consistently. My name is modeling and I run a branding studio called Future Forum. We specialize in helping sustainable businesses do branding, design, packaging, and generally communicates to the customers. I also run a second company which helps creative businesses managed projects, and work better with clients. When I started out in my studio, I was told that designers and creatives get work through referrals. And so if you just do a good job and you make a nice portfolio, you'll succeed. Now, I'm not saying that's completely wrong, but the problem with referrals is it's extremely inconsistent. I want to achieve through this class is to share with you the different ways that you can create consistent new clients for your design business. One of the biggest race we're gonna be looking at this is through a lead funnel. When you create it lead funnel, you have a way to build a relationship with your customers before they are ready to bike to make sure that we get the most from the whole process. We're also going to look at how to package your services. Because if you have a service that lets say branding or package design, it can be a little bit abstract or confusing for clients to understand what that actually practically. So we're going to be defining your product packages as a service. Essentially. We're also going to be looking at how to create a really great proposals so that once those leads come in through the door, we have a proposal directly sells them, that sells you as a creative and as a designer. And that shows your process, your timeline, you budget all these different important things that get people to say, yes. We're also going to be touching a little bit on building relationships. And this is something where I was told traditional networking was something I should try going and exchanging business cards, having coffee. And I found that really difficult. I definitely got some clients through it. But it was just so much time, so much stress, and a lot of kind of just empty conversations. And the thing that worked much better for me was building relationship with other creatives so that you can exchange services and help each other work on client projects together so that you can offer more services to one Clay. I really hope that discourse will take some of the mysticism and stress out of getting design clients for your business. If you want to get some consistency in your business, I really hope that you'll find this course helpful. And I look forward to seeing you in class. And we're gonna be working on the class project, which is creating your lead funnel so that the end of the project, you feel super ready to get out there to get more clients and start seeing the results. 2. Packaging your services: Hi and welcome to the first lesson. No, we're going to be talking a little bit about how to package or explain your different designs services to potential clients. This is something that we want to do before we start generating leads and try and get more people to our website and to our social media. Because once they get there, we want to make sure that what they're seeing is something that feels super attractive to them. And they want to reach out and get started. And when we think about this, it can often be very obvious to ourselves what something like branding or logo animation includes. But it doesn't mean that that's obvious to everyone like your plants, for example. So think about the different deliverables that your service includes. And so if it's brand name could be things like logo design, a color palette. It can be fonts, it could be layouts, and it could be a general description as a visual language, how vague or how detailed you get really depends on the types of clients that you have. So if your ideal client is, let say, another marketing agency, they might already be aware of some of these terms. But if let's say it's real estate agents, they might need a little bit more detail to understand exactly what it is that you're offering. You can also focus on the benefits are what they get from it. Not just in terms of deliverables, but in terms of the results that they get. So if someone works with you, maybe they have a great experience. Maybe they have something that is super easy to use afterwards. So for example, one of the things many of our clients experience is once they have their Brian, they're super excited to use it, but they don't have that much time. And so making, for example, all these social media posts and updating all of their profiles becomes very tedious. So we included lots of templates, for example, social media templates or implementation of the brand on their platforms as part of our service. So think about who your customers are and the things that they might be interested in. Then we want to make sure that the waiver describing our services actually focuses on this. Remember what you want to focus on. You can think about the three piece pain point, product and price. So for someone to actually engage with you and reach out to wanna do a project. All three of these kind of have to be right for them. When it comes to the pain point, it really comes down to understanding and knowing your customers. And this is something that as a creative professional, even if you're new, you might still have an idea of the types of businesses that you want to help. So what do they need help with? Is it something that is going to make them look more professional? Is it something that is going to reach more people that get clients or customers into their business. Is it something that is going to help them? And I tell a story? So think about the pain point that you're solving for your customer. And that should be part of the way that you describe your product or your service. In this case, the second thing we wanna think about is then the product. So how does that translate? What are the actual exact things that you get from working from you? We're going to have a look at an example for the way that we've structured things on our website. We know that those customers who want things at different price points and customers who want things at different levels of complexity because there are different stages of their business. So that means that we have kind of three packages. We have one which is a free course, which means that they're getting something that is completely free, that getting them in through the door and into that lead frontal lobe we're gonna be talking about a little bit more later. The second one is a paid consultation, and this is for customers who are ready to move forward, but perhaps not sure if they need the full-on service or maybe they just need someone to help them give advice so that they can move forward with someone within their company who was a little bit more experience than most people, and someone who perhaps is a volunteer if they're in a charity organization. The third service as our branding. And this is where you have that full on service that we offer. Well, you've got logo design and visual language, and you get social media templates and get all these different things. And this is for someone who is ready to commit, they want to find out exactly what you get as part of the experience. And this leads us into the third, which is price. With price, you really wanna think about who that person is and what they are ready for at that point. So as you saw with these three different services that we offer, these three different packages, you have something for everyone. So definitely don't feel like you have to offer something for every type of customer because he's Taiwanese and have a target audience. But in our case, the typical journey that someone goes through is think that they need help with design. They understand that they want a brand, but they're not quite sure if they have the budget for it yet. The first thing they do is that take our free course. They see that this is something that's really helpful, is something that's interesting and something that they need in their business. They then attempt to do it themselves. And this is something that I might be really helpful and work for a couple of years for this business. But once they hit a certain point, they need to grow, they need to have a better way of communicating. So they reached out and they have the consultation. Let's say you've had a consultation. We point out things they can improve about their brand. And this kind of carries them on for maybe one to a couple of more years where they can themselves implement these improvements that make their brand stronger. But at some point, most companies, when they get a little bit bigger, they need an actual dedicated expert who is working on their brand from a really 360 perspective, doing strategy, doing packaged design, doing all these different things in a way that you need professional programs for and you need expertise in the industry. So we think about our customers from going through this journey and what do they need at each pot. So we're not trying to please everyone, but we're trying to get the people who would be interested in working with us and guiding them through the different options that we have when you're creating your own ones, make sure that it feels easy to understand the difference between the different option. So let's say for example, you're an illustrator and you do something like different illustrations for different books or different online resources. Maybe your services are, let's say, web illustrations, creating an icon sets, or creating an illustration for a book. Make sure that it's a clear distinction between what these different services are. So that the overall service listening just feel like illustration because I becomes very difficult for clients to understand what it is that they're buying into an important thing about your services and how the way that you package them is also that they really have to work for you. Think about this both from a perspective of, of course, the pricing, the house to work for you, but also from a perspective of how many different things do you have time to promote? How many different things do you want to be associated with? It's always easier to become an expert at something. And so if your services are that's a different variations of things or like for us, it's under the umbrella of branding, so it becomes a little bit easier to promote that if your packages are web design, illustration package design, branding, and logo animation, all on one website. And it's definitely possible to do it, but it just takes a lot more marketing power from you at to build that brand as being a very versatile designer. Before we move forward to the next video, I'm gonna do a quick little recap because I know there's a lot of tips in here. And I want to make sure that it feels easy for you to implement. So the first step that we wanted to look at post to break down, you're offered to make it as easy as understand as possible. And this should be targeted to specifically your clients. Focus both on benefits and deliverables. So then they tend to really understands what they're getting out of working with you. Step two is to also tailor your message in to your ideal customers. Think about how much they already know the types of terms and terminology that they already are familiar with and make sure that the offer feels very compelling to that specific customer. Third, make sure that you remember the three Ps, pinpoint, product and price. And this way you can make sure that the author is very targeted at your ideal clients. Last, make your different packages very distinct from each other. Make it easy for your client to understand which to the services that they need from you at this point. Next up, we're going to dig into the big part of this course, which is how to create a lead funnel for you business. 3. Creating a lead funnel: Now we're going to be talking about and lead funnel and how to create one for your creative business specifically. So all lead funnel is, is a chain of different events that a potential customer goes through in order to build a relationship with you and get value from you. Ask the creative. The goal we want to think about here is, yes, we want to get some form of weight to compact this person, like through building a email chain or through getting someone to follow you. But the goal is also to really show your expertise and add value to this person's life and business. A typical lead funnel looks something like this. You have the brand awareness or the awareness of you asked someone who get help, ask the step one. This is typically built through things like social media or through your websites. And it helps people understand the types of services that you offer, which is why we looked at how to productize your services and package them versed. It also brings up this awareness of a problem that they couldn't quite formulate themselves. So maybe they knew that their communication wasn't working, but they didn't understand that they had to build a stronger brand. For example. After this brand awareness stage, we get into this kind of relationship building state. And so this is where perhaps they sign up to your email list and you have an automated sequence of emails that helps them solve the problem that they came to you for after the have this kind of value portion and you filled a relationship, that's when you make some sort of an offer or he doesn't have to be a pure sales pitch. And my case, after they have taken the free course, they've gotten lots of advice. Then we ask if they want a paid consultation. And this is after quite a few weeks or months of building this relationship. So I wanted to show you our lead funnel as an example because I always find it so much easier to actually get something concrete. And the different components that make up this lead funnel. First I want to show you the landing page that we have for it. And so when we promote it on social media or when, for example, we put a link to it and our blogposts to get people to this, this landing pages really what cells, that beginning of this lead funnel. And so if you see here we have a little bit about what the course and the benefits are. You can build your own brand in seven days. And we talk a little bit about the different things are included. We show a snapshot of the worksheet so you can see a little bit the type of quality that you would get in the course. We also include a little bit of a description here telling you that each day through these seven days, of course, you'll get a supportive email that tells you common pitfalls, things that can go right or wrong and give you inspiration. And so from looking at this landing page, you get an idea of all of the different value that you get. And it's totally for free. And showing that either something has a price or something is for free is really important because this is something that people really take into consideration when they make a decision. Make it as easy as possible. We ask people to add very little information about themselves. At this stage of the lead funnel, we're not looking for a bunch of information about potential projects or who they are or their business. We're just trying to be helpful. After the landing page, I wanted to show you what these different emails looked like and what the workbook looks like. So you can create any type of lead magnet. And this is actually part of our class projects. The lead magnet should be something that is showing your expertise. It's truly adding value. So don't make something that is adding like 2% of the knowledge and then they kind of have to go to you anyway. They really should be able to get a lot of information and a lot of benefits and value from this resource. I know I can feel a little bit scary to give away a lot of your secret sauce, so to say. But the truth is, people just don't do the same work as you if they don't have the experience. So showing your expertise and experience, it is a way for you to build that relationship. So let's have a look at the workbook first. The workbook is super easy to follow. It has a one or a few pages for each of the days. So it's a 7-day challenge to build your brand. So we're talking about the different components. So for example, how to build your persona's and strategy, how to create your mood board, then going into logos and sketching, and then actually creating a visual language and lasts implementation. So these are all steps that are very easy to follow. We have examples, visual things, and it's something where you could do it yourself and also support. We also have these daily emails. So we can have a look at, for example, the one for a mood board. Building mood board can be quite challenging for people because it's hard to know when a mood board is working and when it's not working. So what we did in this email is we show examples and we talk people through why this would work is working and why this mood for B is not working. And so by giving all these different resources away, you're really building this relationship and you're showing that you care about them having a successful outcome of their projects. You're also showing up in their inbox consistently. And you're doing things that make you seem like someone who will be able to help out and someone has really good intentions. I mentioned before using automation. And so the way that we've structured this, as soon as someone signs up to the email list, they automatically enter this automated chain of events. And so I'll show you what that looks like here. And ours is done through mail chimp. And so you can assign to set conditions. So I can set the delay to be one day between each email so that I know that on day one they're going to be working on this. On day two, they're going to be working on this. And so they're going to need the tips specifically for this. At the end of it, you can set conditions like if someone has been opening your emails and men engaging, then you can say, this is someone who's probably interested in more services. And then you can send them something that is more of a sales pitch or an offer. If they haven't engaged much, you can send them into more of a typical news list. For example, updates or tips or things like that. So you can kind of tailor the experience depending on the type of customer and their response to your emits. Next up, we actually want to track how these lead magnets are doing. So the first thing we want to look at is your landing page. How is it performing? How many people are reaching its, How many people are actually converting from it. And use that as a benchmark so that when you try to improve it, if you think, for example, ONE, maybe this is not clear enough. I wanna make a change. I want to test it. You have a before and something that is after as a result. So you can see if the changes that you made and the improvements that you made actually were improvements. The second thing you want to see is in programs like male chimp for example, and you can see how many people have opened each email. This is really helpful since you see if, for example, your subject lines are working. If you can tell that people aren't opening your emails, that is typically because of the subject line or because the resource that you're offering isn't helpful enough. Or maybe you're understanding way too many emails and people just don't have the energy to open all of them. So these are all things that you can experiment with. If you've got an opening them, try and proving your subject line and see what happens. Waits for a couple weeks and see if there's any difference. Be patient and make sure that you experiment with these things. Everything has to be little bit of an AB test, a little bit of design eight or design be performing best. And I know that were designed kinds. We want it to happen fast sometimes. But really what we're trying to do here is create a system where you consistently gets clients through the door. And we want that system and that little machine to be as optimized and while working as possible. So take your time to make little experiments and see how you can improve it. 4. Class project: For your class projects, I want you to create your own Lead for not. The first thing we're gonna do is think about one problem that your customers would have, that you could help them with. The best way that I find is to make a list of the different questions that clients typically have when they approach you. So if they typically ask, how do we reach more people? How do we get our video scene or how do we communicate our value as a, as a business? These are things that you can write down and then your job is just to create the answers to those things. So if you want to just give, for example, a sheet, cheat on how to get more engagement. And through Instagram, for example, by creating posts that are well-designed. Then you can have these different visual examples. You can show, here's a problem, here's the solution. Here's something that isn't working here, something that is working and kinda juxtapose and really show people the nitty gritty and the why behind the different choices that we make. Next up, you'll want to think about the format of this lead magnet that you're making. So you can make a PDF so people can download just like I had from mine. You can also do things like recording a YouTube video and actually unlisted so that people can just access it through the link that you send them in the introductory email once they sign up to your newsletter, for example. And you can also do courses or things like that behind kind of a p wall if that's something that you're interested in and make sure that the type of format that you create a something that suits the type of customer that you are looking for. So once we know the problem that the client is trying to solve, the expertise you can offer and the format that you have decided on. That's when we're going to start making it. And this of course, is something where it can feel a little bit daunting to try to put your whole value. You're down on a piece of paper. And what I found was something that helped me a lot was to think about it. As, you know, we have clients that mean different problems solved. And there's nothing that says you can't have multiple lead magnets. But trying to create autos who's lead magnets all at once can feel quite intimidating. So I started with one type of client with one type of problem. And I created a lead my edge for that first. Once I felt comfortable that that one was working, it was automated Abel's generating leads. Then I moved on to the second one. So make sure that you start somewhere. You feel comfortable that you know how to explain your expertise and guide people through the material. Even though this video has been all about how to create your lead funnel, the video has mainly covered how to create your lead magnet so far, this is because a lot of people tend to find it quite challenging to see what kind of lead magnet they should create, how to go about it. And the topics that they should cover. People have also asked about the format. So that's why I wanted to talk a little bit about this for the rest of your funnel, you also need to consider how you're going to drive traffic to it. So creating your social media strategy, creating perhaps SEO and a good landing page via websites, and how to track how it's doing once you've actually launched, all these topics were covered in the previous video on the lead funnel. And because we are not specifically sponsoring any of the tools, I'm not going to be covering them more in detail here. But if you have any questions on how to, let's say create your landing page, or how to drive traffic through social media. You can either ask your questions here on your projects or there's lots of other classes on scales that cover these topics in a lot more detail than what I can do in this course. I hope this was helpful and please don't hesitate to ask any questions if you have them as they pop up when you create your lead magnet and your lead funnel. 5. Proposals that convert: Great. So now that you've created your lead funnel and you have lots of people who are interested, it's time to create a 3D competing proposal that shows why you're the right person to work with your expertise, your case studies, all of this different stuff. Now, we want to make sure that we create a proposal that has a lot of information that is valuable for your potential clients. But of course, you don't want to spend hours and hours for each proposal creating it because you don't know if it's going to lead to a project or not. So the solution to this is to create a really nice template and then to customize that where it really matters. So I wanna go through the different sections that I suggest you have in your proposal. And this will help you get those leads that you got in through your deep one'll into becoming actual clients and ongoing project. Once we get into the proposal, the first page has a lot of actually quite custom information. So here I put the brief, which is information that I have heard from the client and me kind of explaining to them how I understood their brief and while they're looking for. In the approach section, I talk about how I suggest we approach the project. Maybe the types of deliverables that I think we should do, and the type of brand that I'm seeing them creates. Then we move on to the project scope. And this is really important because the scope is going to help you and your client make sure that you're on the same page. So throughout the whole process, there's no misunderstandings or any kind of problems like that. So we wanna make sure that if there's multiple items included, you have each of them like brand strategy or identity, their own thing. I also like to make a little bit of what's included bullet point lists. That way you can have a little bit of a text describing your approach and how you're seeing it and what is included. But you also have a very clear overview of what is included. Then I have a section on the team. And I think this is really important for making it quite personal. And a lot of times, many of the people who are applying for the same project, they might have the same qualifications. Maybe they have the same level of experience. They all have really nice portfolio pieces. And so talking a little bit about maybe your company values and your experience, and even putting some faces to the team can really help make sure that you kind of put yourself apart and that you create that personal connection with the client. We also include a testimonial, which I think is really important because it shows that kind of social proof that a lot of clients or after next step we do a couple of different selected case studies and these should be relevant to the client project that you are pitching for. So in this case, this was a pitch for a client in the food industry. So we put another food brand that we had worked with, put a couple of nice mockups to show the work that you've done. I gave a bit of background information and that just helps your client understand how this project and case study related to them. Why it is an interesting piece for them to have a look at. Next up, if there's a specific part of the project that you might not have covered in your case studies. Or that might be extra important for you to highlight. That can be something you want to make your own section. So this client was after packaging, so I decided to put a couple extra pieces of packaging just to show that kind of expertise that we have. Next up we have another practical section, which is the project workflow and timeline. And so here you're outlining the different steps that you're going through with your client. And this again, is just to make sure there's no confusion. You're showing that you're super professional, that you prepared and you've done this before. So this is a section you can very easily create once and then just slightly customized with, let's say, changing the amount of time or changing the precise details in each of these sections to fit the specific project. Last up, we have the project budgets. And here I think it's really important to be super clear. If you have, for example, VAT that you need to add to a project, or if you have any specific requirements like we do 50% of a payment upfront as a deposit and 50% of a final payment at the end. I like to put it here as well. We have a full-on design agreement or contract that we sent once the client has committed to the project. But these little details can be things that are really important for a client to know before they decide to commit to a project. We also have a little thank you section. And in some parts we even included a whole page with images from our portfolio or office just to give a nice last page because a lot of clients, they tend to scold right onto the end of the last page. And instead of them seeing the budget right away, they actually get to see a little bit of your work culture. So I think that's quite nice. So if we have a quick scroll through this now, you can see that the cover page is one that you can create as templates. The brief and the approach you do a little bit more custom. The project's scope is quite custom. But then when you get into pages like our team, case studies, you can prepare once and then use the case studies that are relevant and just kind of plop them into the project as you're doing it and through proposals. Similar with the timeline and process, you can create it once and then just do little tweaks to it. And the project budget is mostly just about plugging in numbers and making sure that everything is right. But most of it is again, something that you can create a template. So having this template for a proposal, it will save you a ton of time. And that way you are able to create really professional-looking proposals without spending a lot of time before, you know, if the client is ready to commit. 6. Referrals: So even though I mentioned in the intro of this class that referrals is something that is hard to rely on. I still feel like I have to mention referrals a little bit in a course on getting design clients. Now referrals are great because they are someone who is already a warm lead, meaning there's someone who's already interested. They already heard really good things about you from someone that they trust. They're much more likely to actually convert into a paying customer than someone who is a cold lead. So your funnel is really going to work with numbers, you know, getting a lot of people into your funnel and getting interested and referrals is really about high-quality. And a few people, I think when it comes to our furrows, there's two things that you can do to get more girls. The first one is to obscurity and do a good job. And the second one is to actually ask for girls. And this is where I find that most people kind of forget to do this. At the end of a project. You can say to your past clients, I think we had a great project. If you know someone else who would be interested, please refer them to me. I would love to work with them as well. Some people just ask and that can be a great way SOM people offer and it's a 10% referral bonus. So if you spend a lot of time and money on marketing, offering, let's say 10% of a project that someone signs up for as a result of a buffer is something that can be kind of like a nice incentive for your client to refer more people. This is something that works really well, especially if you work and team up with a lot of creative businesses. Because you can kind of give this referral bonus to each other. And if it comes a great way to build out your network as a creative business. 7. Selling to existing clients: Another very underrated way of getting more work in is to encourage existing clients to continue projects or start new projects. This is really helpful because it's so much easier to sell to someone who already trust you already knows that you're doing a great job. Rather than trying to find those cold leads. What I found was that even if we had all of our services listed on our website, if our client hired us for branding, for example, they were still maybe not aware that we did package design or help with marketing templates and things like that. So a lot of things that help you sell to existing clients just have to do with informing them that you actually offer this. And I like to do this as part of a kind of hand off package. So when you finished up a project, you can create a little template for somebody that you send off to your clients. And this is something that can contain links to maybe shared folders with all of the deliverables. It can have maybe a request for testimonial. It can have a list of the different services that you offer and generally ways to say thank you for the project and encouraged them to look a little bit more into the types of things that you can offer. Another great way to do this is if someone approaches you as a client, as a potential clients for a certain project, you can also inform them of the different services that you offer before you send them a proposal. So many times when I speak to someone, they might come to us for branding. And I might ask them, hey, have you thought about how it will work implementing the brown? Do you need any help with that at the end? Or do you need product photography? Or do you need maybe a website design? And so asking these questions, it not only helps you potentially get more work, but it also shows that you are interested in their business, you know what you're talking about and you're anticipating their needs. So you're truly creating a custom solution for your plants. So make sure that you ask if they need something else, anticipate their needs. Think about the type of business that they have and what they might need help with. And that is a great way to upsell, I guess it's a little bit of a I'm like that word. But to get those people to have more value from your services. 8. Collaboration: Last but not least, I want to talk about a form of networking because networking was something I really struggled with as a new business owner. I went to all of these different events where you sort of had a coffee and maybe sauces drove here. We're talking to different people and you were trying to explain what you did and, you know, a couple of seconds and you are trying to listen to all these people take in the information. Incredibly stressful. I found personally and very difficult to get work because people are not really listening. They're, they're talking about themselves and talking about their businesses. And they're not really taking in the information that you are telling them. So what I found really worked was in terms of networking rather than going to networking events. Really trying to build a network, a true network of other creative businesses that offer services are complimentary to your own. So if you are a web developer and maybe you can team up with an illustrator or someone who can design icons for the website. Maybe someone who can do little animations that you can integrate, or maybe someone who does branding, for example. So finding these different creatives that actually build up more of an agency together. And that is a really good way to work when you're kind of building a team and you can offer way more services. A benefit of this is also that you can take on much bigger projects. Because a client that might have only considered someone that could really help with all of these different things together. Can all of a sudden consider you because you're part of this network of creatives. 9. Final thoughts: I really hope that you found this course helpful. I remember feeling quite lost at times in my business on how to actually generate kind of consistently new clients. And especially now when people are often working from home and try and grow their business in a new way. I really hope that these different tips helped you and that it felt very actionable and like something that you can try out today. I'm super excited to see the types of lead magnets that you create. So make sure to post your class projects so that we can give each other feedback and support each other. And maybe even find that next creative partner to build your network with. Thank you so much for watching this course, and I can't wait to see what you do. Good luck.