How do I get my clients for my web design business?

I probably should keep my mouth shut on the subject because
it will create competition for those in the same business I've helped.

Hint

Best,
Ewen

Since we live in the same city, I thought I'd help you out.

Starting out, I would go to craigslist, find a companies that have poor webdesign and make a simple website for them for free. I would send this to them stating that I have done this for free of charge, I would include free info that details the importance of a proper website and statistics.
Tell them if they have any questions to email you.

The key to this is to first choose the right niche and company. Ones that will gain revenue from your services. This creates value for you services. Second if it is a well known company in raleigh, and they decide to not use your designs, you can put it in your portfolio, and use them as an example for new leads.

Here's a few sites of the competition in the Raleigh area.

Raleigh Web Design & Website Development | Internet Marketing | SEO Raleigh NC
Strategic Web Design - Custom Website Development Studio | Merkados
Web Design Raleigh|Fine Point Creative
DesignHammer Website Design and Development in North Carolina
Web Marketing & Award Winning Web Design in Raleigh, Durham & Chapel Hill, NC, USA | OnWired
Web Design, Graphic Design, SEO Marketing in Wilmington NC
Website Design & WordPress Raleigh NC, Cary,Durham,Chapel Hill North Carolina


I'd suggest you do a little more research on the subject before attempting to give/sell sub-par services to people. Sorry if that sounds rude.


EDIT: People are also going to bombard this thread with build some backlinks, and target cragistlist or get your "SEO" going and build your list and bla bla bla. Bottom line is that you need to produce quality. Unfortunately the site linked to in your signature, is not quality.

First thing - check your spelling and grammar. If you have a hard time checking those, then you are going to have a tremendously difficult time dealing with clients

I'd suggest switching to a Premium WP theme instead. No offense but it would be easier and of higher quality than the current design.

i suggest you to do E-mail marketing for your client diffidently your business is growing after E-marketing it is best way to growing yourself

Like others have mentioned, your work has to be top notch. There is just way too much competition out there for your to not have anything but the very best. It's not an easy business, so work on your craft first. Visit top sites that teach about design and website commerce. Study the market, see what sells, and eventually your craft will develop. Once you develop your craft then you can focus on getting paying customers.

Best of luck.

The word free is littered on your website too much that I wouldn't be able to take you seriously.

Hi Zach,

Have you tried PPC? And also you can try direct mail. When doing PPC start with a small budget. Just a thought.

For making calls, have a look at this post.

Also view these:

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ml#post5727652

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ml#post5922258

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ml#post6298956

I think offering 'free' is the wrong way to go, personally. I promote using flyers and visit businesses locally, when I have time. I've noticed that materials you use, and your site need to be quite sharp, since these businesses get an impression that's hard to change once it's implanted.

Also look at PostiveVibe's report right here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ey-makers.html

Hi

Networking is where I do the majority of my business.

Your Local Chamber or Commerce will often organise networking events. Also look out for a BNI group in your area (In the UK go to 4Networking groups).

These groups are fantastic for meeting local businesses. They get to know you and when they want work done they will use YOU because they know you.

I get lots of work here AND also lots of referrals too.

Gary

Well dear, They are so many freelancing websites, which are allows to contractors to find jobs or work posted on there freelancing sites. For this instance, they will have to charge 1 to 10 percent of your total income. You may do search on Google to find good freelancing site. Thank you

zachary0611,

I am all for Lead Generation Companies. I like the following (No affiliate link), webleadsinc dot com and leads2results dot com.

I hope this helps

Our new design coming up looks great. My brother is hand coding in html 5, css, photoshop, and using jquery. He is getting his Bachelors in web design and graphic design. I am going to start going to Community college for Web Technologies.Obviously using wordpress templates would be the easiest, but we want to be real web designers. We may be forced to learn how to design within Wordpress, tho. I thought offering free web design services would help us build our portfolio up, but no luck so far. This is a long term project for us and we have no problem undercutting everybody to get us business. Thanks for the ideas on where to find new business. Linkedin seems like it will help us build relationships.

I've said this before but lead generation in itself is a business and needs to be treated like a business.

When I first started I took a cold hard look at my skills and weaknesses.
Which were very clear to me at the time.

Skill #1) I can design nice websites.

Weakness #1) I suck at generating leads.

Because there was that huge imbalance, I focused 10% of my time on skills I already had, and 90% of my time on skills I NEEDED TO LEARN.

So essentially, I focused on nothing other than lead generation. That is what I suggest you do. Finish the design, submit it here when you're done, then turn your attention 100% to marketing & finding customers.

There are so many brilliant ways to market yourself the key is how you invest your time.

Don't do it this way -

20% focused on Craigslist
20% on cold calling
20% on direct mail
20% on Facebook
20% on whatever else.

Do it this way especially when you're new.

100% focused on **1** method. If you leave that method before its working, you wasted all your time for nothing. Even if you say "I'll come back to this later", by the time you come back to it, it will feel like MORE of an issue than it really is.

Everytime you run into a problem, and redirect your focus elsewhere, you give that problem 100xs more credibility than it needs.

Thats the quickest way to burn time & money is by not setting clear priorities and SYSTEMATICALLY executing those priorities. I say "systematically" because there should be very little emotion involved. If you're getting fed up or pissed you're not generating leads, do NOT get angry or emotional about it. That only clouds your judgement further and you always need to be objective as possible about your business.

When 1 method works, THEN move onto a second method.

People here are able to generate leads REGARDLESS of the marketing medium. So pick one medium you are most comfortable with, then own it. If you ever reach the conclusion "this advertising medium doesn't work", you need to immediately reframe that belief as "I have not been working this medium the right way".

Then you immediately go find people who ARE succeeding in x niche, then model what they do. Furthermore, if you are having a really hard time generating leads, and have actually invested some good time trying, shoot me a pm & I'll help you get your first customer. If you show me that you put in some time and work, and thoroughly tried your best, I will even guarantee your first client. I genuinely feel bad for people who try their best and fail, but the ironic thing is there are very FEW of those types in this world.

What I tend to see more of are people who just think they tried their best, but really didn't. So please don't become one of those people. =]



Good luck! -Red

How would you go about getting leads from Facebook? Liking every small business in the Raleigh area and messaging them? lol My brother is the web designer, so I should focus on generating the leads. Makes sense.

Well as you probably know web design is EXTREMELY competitive in the SEO world. if you are trying to gain any online exposure through the search engine I would recommend start out with local keywords such as quality web design in (area, city) etc...Start out local and meet the clients if you are able to and build from there. Once you are established with recurring revenues you can slowly targeting global keywords. Hope this helps.

Cold Calling, Email Marketing,Social Media Promotions All these will certainly help you to grow your business fast but you must have patience for it.

Hello there!
There are many ways to earn the trust of people and turn them into your loyal clients. The basic one is that you have to invest on the services that you are offering. Once its good then you can work on the other techniques which are more into marketing your busines through forums and putting up links. Try to find clients from websites such as craiglist.
Regards

I find it easier to start local:

1. Research local businesses and see if they have a website (assuming they're in a business that should have one)

2. Go in and offer them your services

3. While you're trying to get business, you can build your portfolio by offering friends/artists/small businesses, your service.

Your site looks like it is a parked domain page. I would definetely redesign it, make it look professional, then use different prospecting methods and position yourself there with an unique selling point (USP). Here is a very fresh thread to help you http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...-no-optin.html

Good luck.

i would say by direct mail or by cold calling which is what i have started doing and is going well.

Let's start by getting your webpage unsuspended.

Ohh what happen man...

Very good!