How To Promote Your Graphic Design Business

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Get the most out of business cards
Business cards are your most important publicity items. They tell people how to contact you (don’t rely on email signatures—clients will wipe off your emails without hesitation and will not be able to contact you when a job comes up).

Executives normally keep vendor business cards in a case or card-box. Make sure you’re in it. And make sure your card has ALL your details: mailing address, telephone, cell phone number, email, and website address.

Your business card should be smart, clean, and easy-to-read. Don’t be too flamboyant. I know a designer who had his details printed from left-to-right on one side, and his details printed backwards from right-to-left on the other side. Whilst filing it away, his biggest potential client clipped it onto a backer card inside out. When she called upon it later she couldn’t make sense of it. Consequently she trashed the card and called another designer. Here are 100 business card designs that are brilliant but not too flamboyant.

Print plenty of cards. An extra thousand won’t break the bank. Give several cards to new prospective clients at meetings (they may give them to their colleagues), and if you have existing clients or contacts, make sure they are well stocked with your cards so they can recommend you. Add a few cards in with your invoices. Leave a few cards in company reception areas, at sports clubs, and anywhere where your prospective clients are likely to congregate. Get them in people’s hands.

Create an online portfolio
Unless you are a web-designer, creating your own website is not essential, although it does give you some advantages. A website will help you to communicate your portfolio via email without sending attachments (clients will be suspicious of emails with attachments from unknown addresses—a link to a website is preferable). A website is also a good opportunity to sell yourself with some hard-working copy. Good copy can help you to win new clients, so buy yourself a good copywriting manual and learn the basic copywriting tricks of the trade.

If you have no experience of designing websites, or you don’t have time to create one, don’t be put off, you can buy inexpensive templates online as a temporary solution.www.templateshome.com is a good place to start, where you can buy smart website templates for around $60. Buying a dot.com address and uploading it onto a website browser should cost around $25.

Market yourself with mailer-postcards
You may want to print some mailer postcards at the same time you print your business cards. Direct mail postcard designs are a great way to show off your creative talents and get noticed. In an age when executives are familiar with receiving emails from scouting freelancers, postcards received through snail-mail are a novel and memorable way to sell your freelance services.

Showcase your best visual/visuals on side one, then write some marketing copy to sell your services on side two (and remember to include your full contact details). Your copy should focus on the benefits your clients will get from using you.

Read the rest of the article here——>

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Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and communications manager for a major UK publishing company. He is the author of The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists, both available for online download.