Over the past few weeks, I’ve been getting emails from lovely readers asking me “how do you get your dream clients?” I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still learning and figuring out what ways of refining work for my business. I started this conversation a few months back in this post, but thought I’d stop by and share a few more ideas/thoughts. These tips are specifically meant to help with getting those dream clients into your portfolio.
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1. Extreme Curation: Only show the work that truly aligns with where you want to go. I don’t think portfolios should be about proving where you’ve been, but more about paving a road for where you want to go. Be super selective in what you choose to put out into the world. Read about how software can improve your productivity.
2. The Classic Reach Out: Reach out to a brand you admire and offer your services for free. I wouldn’t do this all the time and I don’t really advocate giving away your talents for free, but if you’re just dying to work with someone, it might be worth it. That one project with your dream client can help move your portfolio into the direction you are trying to go.
3. Power of the Personal Project: Initiate a personal project. Sometimes it might be beneficial to make up a project that truly aligns with your vision. Just because it wasn’t paid work doesn’t mean it can’t stand tall in your portfolio and help you transform your portfolio. For me, I use my blog as a great place to explore new styles and play around with new photography techniques.
4. Team Up: Collaborating has been one of the most helpful tools for tailoring my portfolio. Team up with a like-minded individual to either tackle a personal project or to pitch your work and skills to a dream client you both want to work with. I’ve found that combining talents into one package can sometimes be more appealing to larger companies.
5. Pitching: If you’ve got a bit of extra time on your hands, pitching to clients can be helpful. From my experience, cold call pitching can be very time consuming and doesn’t usually produce the most immediate results. With that said, practicing pitching your skills and work to brands you admire is really good practice. I’d suggest creating a very “to the point” PDF that outlines who you are, your vision, a few tailored work samples and how they can get in touch with you. I think it’s also important to tell them how you see your collaboration working and what you have to offer them. You never know where things will go.
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I wanted to thank those of you who stopped by this post to leave a comment about what freelance topics interest you most. I’ll be answering your questions over the next few weeks. Some topics of interest so far deal with pricing, process, using sub-contractors and sharing the bad with the good. Want to leave a comment? You can here –>