How to advertise to get freelance graphic design work

Freelancers rely on getting a steady stream of new clients or job offers to continue operating. They’ll rely on marketing and advertising to attract these clients, just like any other business. This is true of all freelancers, whether they’re consultants, contractors, or graphic designers.

In this article, we’ll look at how to advertise your freelance graphic design services. This includes marketing strategies like social media advertising and creating a website portfolio. The full list of topics we’ll cover includes:

• Creating a website
• Social media advertising
• Freelancing sites

The first step in effectively advertising your graphic design services is to create a business website. Having a website establishes an online presence for your business, which means it’s easier for clients to find you and offer you work.

A website also provides a place for you to demonstrate the quality of your work using a portfolio. A portfolio is a great way to attract new clients: it’s essentially a collection of your best work that you can use to advertise your graphic design services. 

Finally, a website provides a hub to store all of your contact information, like social media links, phone numbers, and email addresses. This means that customers can easily get in touch with you after finding your website.

Building a website does require some technical skills, so you might consider hiring a professional to help create the perfect website. There are also a lot of easy-to-use website builders out there that you can try if hiring a professional is too expensive.

Once you have a website, you’ll need to direct people there: this is where SEO comes in. SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It refers to the process of improving your website so that it ranks higher on search engine results pages. 

Because of the complexity of search engine technology, thousands of things can affect your SEO. That said, there are a few common SEO tips that you can use fairly easily. 

The first is making your website easy to navigate. This means creating a simple, easy-to-understand structure, so users can easily find what they’re looking for. Having an easily-navigable website is important because search engine technology works like a person to an extent: it won’t rate your website very highly if it can’t find the pages it wants.

Another key SEO tactic is to use relevant keywords in your content. This is probably the most crucial part of SEO, as a search engine won’t even display your content to people searching unless it includes terms similar to what they’re looking for. Good SEO means using keywords in things like your portfolio captions, descriptions of your services, and webpage titles.

You can identify your keywords by performing keyword research. This is a complex topic in itself, so if you’re interested in keyword research, try reading our article ‘SEO tips for startups: Get it right from the start’.

Social media is a great advertising tool for any business, and that includes freelance graphic designers. One of the best ways to find work using social media is to invest in social media advertising, as it’s highly effective and affordable.

Social media advertising is usually a form of Pay Per Click or PPC advertising, which is a kind of internet advert that only costs you when a user clicks on it. This generally saves your business money, as you don’t need to continuously pay to keep the advert up, only when someone clicks on it. 

It’s also very effective as when you pay for a social media advert, you can set the ad to only appear to users with specific interests. So if an individual frequently hires freelance graphic designers, and uses their social media profile to look up content related to graphic design, that user is more likely to see your advert.

PPC adverts might redirect the person clicking on them to your website homepage or our contact page. An important thing to remember is that you’ll pay for every click, not just those from people intending to hire you. People clicking to find out more about your business and accidental clicks will cost you as much money as actual customers do.

One of the most common ways for freelancers to get work is to use a freelancing website. These work like an online noticeboard: first, individuals and organisations post jobs that they need doing on the website. 

Then, freelancers will send applications to the individual or organisation explaining why they’re the best person for the job. The original poster can then pick who they want to work for them at their leisure.

Freelancing sites are good for finding work quickly, as the larger ones usually have tons of jobs available. While they’re not typically a form of advertising, some freelancing sites allow users to create profiles so potential clients can seek out specific freelancers and send them job offers. If the site you use has a profile, try using that as a platform to list your skills and promote your services.

Most of the best freelancing sites are non-specific, which means they accept job offers and users from all sorts of industries. You may want to spend time looking for somewhere that also specialises in graphic design, as you’ll be able to find more appropriate job offers. One example that you may want to try is the design website Dribbble.

With strategic planning and persistence, your advertising efforts should attract new clients to your freelance graphic design business. More clients mean more income for your business, which in turn means you might need to put more time into your financial management. If you don’t have time to spare, consider using Countingup to make your accounting quick and easy.

Trusted by over 40,000 business owners, Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. 

With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also instantly share your bookkeeping with your accountant without worrying about duplication errors, data lags, or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.