How do you find clients?

[RedCrab]

Pretty stupid question considering I'm in digital marketing, I know!

My background is corporate global digital marketing - I was head of digital for Europe. Around five years ago after my first child I started messing around with freelancing. I make it clear what I specialise in and what I can't do. I've had around 8 major clients from word of mouth so I've never had to actually market myself (oh the irony burns!)

Once recent client - the first to get in touch is my site - found me via Indeed. I've had one or two further clients from PPH but find it frustrating. Upwork says there's too many people like me :)

If you find clients or clients find you, how has this come about? Do you have an agency finding you projects? I specifically want to freelance to work from home - there's a ton of in house roles I get calls about weekly and well salaried but I don't want to be in house.

I have industry qualifications from CIM and IDM as well as 12 years plus web and dm experience. My portfolio is healthy. It's just clients are so sporadic!

[MrsMargoLeadbetter]

I freelanced for 7 years in marketing, just gone in-house for now.

I would say 80% of my stuff was from recommendations. But not just from clients, from people that were aware of me from 'the scene'. So I did lots of public speaking, blogging & social media. The speaking was from me generally volunteering myself and then I started to get asked.

In the last few years I was very specific about my niche (the type of orgs I worked for and the services I could offer) and that really helped me focus my own marketing/biz dev.

I have done a few very tailored approaches via email - I would really study their site & social media so I could reflect what they are up to. One of these resulted in a £10K contract, so it is worth spending the time. I have also had CEO's compliment me on bothering to be tailored even though there wasn't money in it.

I went on the PPH etc sites initially but they are generally full of ppl that want the cheapest freelancer.

It sounds like you are clear about what you do and for whom. I'd try some tailored emails. You say you have 8 clients, do you mean 8 active/current clients? Are you able to develop them any more? That would be the quickest win I guess?

Have you done the whole 'spreadsheet thing' recently? Working out how many hours you want to work, therefore how much you need to earn etc? Obviously allowing time for biz dev/admin within the hours you want to work? Then looking at different ways of filling that time? Can be a useful thing to do, taking a step back etc?

This comes up a lot on this great freelancer group
on FB: www.facebook.com/groups/freelancelifestyle/ do join if you aren't already a member.

Good luck.

[RedCrab]

Thank you so much - all of that is really helpful. I've joined the FB group you linked to.

I really need to get my game face on with regards to approaching clients. One idea I had was to approach businesses similar to projects I've worked on before and show them my work?

But I'm not massively comfortable with cold calling and fishing for business, and I don't really know how to go about it.