Organic Marketing for Creative Entrepreneurs
Vol. 027
Easy and Organic Marketing for Graphic Designers and Creative Entrepreneurs.
A few easy ways to get your creative work in front of the right people so you get hired to create more work!
A quick bite:
The process of marketing yourself or your creative business can feel intimidating and overwhelming. BUT, it doesn’t have to be! Below are a handful of quick suggestions to easily get your work in front of your ideal customer so that you can start making more money doing the creative work you love.
Continue reading below…
One of the biggest obstacles one must overcome as a freelance graphic designer or creative entrepreneur is the fear of self promotion and marketing.
If you’re too scared to promote yourself and/or your creative services, you might as well toss in the towel now! But, wait — don’t! Here are a few easy ways to “market” yourself without feeling sleazy or cheesy!
Through organic marketing (things like posting on social media [Dribbble, Behance, Linkedin, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram etc.], writing little articles, posting your work on art and design blogs or portfolio sites) you have far higher chances of your work being “stumbled on” by a prospective client or customer.
The average millionaire has 7 income streams. It’s in our best interest to take a similar approach to marketing our businesses, prioritizing getting our work in front of people in 7 or more places.
Life is short, the world is crazy — no need to waste time on self deprecation or perfectionism. Get your work out there, learn to talk about it, and bam — the confidence grows. Your desire for perfectionism will be reduced and the work starts coming in with more frequency. The sooner you allow yourself to gain momentum, the sooner you’ll be riding that momentous wave.
An example of how simply getting your graphic design work in front of prospects brings work:
I recently posted a few times in a row on LinkedIn: 2 mural photos with intentionally, thoughtful captions as well as 1 signage/interior shot of a dispensary that Vicarel Studios created the visual identity for. I doubt it was a coincidence that same week I also received 2 new inquiries asking about murals and cannabis-related work. It was actually that easy.
It’s not always like that, but instead of nitpicking my photos, being worried about the fact that the mural wasn’t exactly how I wanted it to be, I just posted it. And it worked!
Where should you post and market your work?
It’s pretty simple, actually: just consider where your ideal client spends their time (on the internet, at least) and be sure they’re seeing you there.
As the owner of a small branding and graphic design studio, I know that my target demo is creative directors at agencies, business owners, CMO’s, and sometimes other art directors or graphic designers. In knowing this, I try to think through “where do these people spend their time on the internet (blogs/social media/etc.) I then focus on getting my work in those places.
Seems pretty simple, right?
If an art director or creative director is looking for freelancers or small design studios to support a large cannabis branding project they’ll likely start by looking through Dribbble, Behance, Instagram or Pinterest… you better believe my work is scattered all over those sites!
Tim Ferris noted a similar approach when he first launched is claim to fame, the 4 Hour Work Week, stating: “...choosing four or five outlets that nearly every one of my target demo at the time consumed on a daily or weekly basis—Techmeme, TechCrunch, et cetera, Gizmodo, so that I would appear to be everywhere, even though in reality, that was not the case.”
Internationally recognized marketing guru Dr. Jeffery Lant suggests the Rule of 7: “...to penetrate the buyer's consciousness and make significant penetration in a given market, you have to contact a prospect a minimum of seven times within an 18-month period.”
You must hit your ideal clients 7 (or more) times with marketing/advertising/promotion (your creative work) until they become aware of you or interested in you.
In application, the Rule of 7 helps you to prioritize getting your work out in the world in as many places as possible, you have a far more likely chance that your “7 hits of marketing/promotion” will land, ultimately closing a sale.
Striving for ubiquity and frequency of content elicits a higher opportunity for you to be in front of these prospects multiple times within a shorter window of time.
It’s rare that anyone needs “the best”. Your goal should be to be the most top of mind. This will ultimately serve you greatly.
Let’s takes a quick scenario:
Scenario 1:
You’re a logo designer. You’re currently posting your work in two places: Instagram and your website.
Instagram: Instagram’s search feature is not great, and it’s wildly competitive to use popular hashtags for search-ability.
Website: If you haven’t been pumping your website filled with content for the past few years, your website is unlikely to have a strong enough ranking to pull much organic search.
The Takeaway: Posting on just your website and Instagram is a very slow, hopeful, and difficult way to get in front of your ideal clients.
Scenario 1 suggestion:
Everything that you’re posting on Instagram could be repurposed and posted on other platforms like Dribbble or Behance.
On Behance, you could create “projects” of illustrations, hand lettering, logos, or other graphic design work
All images posted on Instagram, your website (and any other visual platform for that matter) could also be pinned to Pinterest.
Every time you post on Instagram, you could repurpose that post on LinkedIn.
When posting on LinkedIn, I personally choose to change the way in which I speak about the work — I definitely strive to take a more marketing/business-forward approach to how I speak about my work on LinkedIn.
Remember, your audience is different on each of these platforms, and you should consider how to best speak to those different audiences.
Each week you could look at your Instagram posts and see if there’s a theme. You could write a quick Medium blog post about that theme and how it’s connected to your work. If there’s not a theme, you could take your favorite Instagram topic and elaborate a bit further on for your Medium blog.
This Medium article could/should also live as a blog post on your website where you can elaborate on the process, story or intention behind the work.
Whatever creative work you’re sharing on Instagram or your Website, you could also submit to design or art blogs (many of them take submissions.)
That right there is 7 platforms you could be on with the same piece of content. 7 different opportunities to get in front of a prospective client (for one of the seven touches that you should be working towards).
I’m not here to spew “advice”. I’m here to suggest that you can easily get your creative work on multiple different platforms with minimal additional effort, making you far more easily discoverable.
“But, my works not good enough” is not a legit excuse. Sorry! Most people don’t need, nor can they afford, “the best”. So, let’s focus more on something realistic: being the most readily available or most frequently seen.
Most of the time, your ideal client is looking for someone who is competent, affordable, available, and easy to find. Through getting your work “everywhere”, you will be top of mind, and oftentimes being top of mind is the best place that you can be. The best work rarely get hired. The work that gets seen is what gets hired.
Like most things in the creative industry, this stuff takes time. The saying “if it was easy, everyone would do it” is quite applicable here. But like most things, the sooner you start, the better. And as I ALWAYS suggest, it’s better to just start and figure it out as you go than it is to worry about perfecting this process.
If you need some ideas, in no particular order, here’s a few ways to get your work in front of more prospects with little effort:
Post blogs (on your website and Medium) that document your story, creative process or your own experience. Whether or not you agree, your story is valuable to others. I wish I embraced this mentality sooner.
Austin Kleon notes that “By sharing our process, we allow for the possibility of people having an ongoing connection with us and our work, which helps us move more of our product.”
Posting the creative work that’s already on your website (or on one specific social media platform) on other social media platforms:
Posting the creative work that’s already on your website or social media on other design portfolio sites:
Submit the creative work that’s already on your website or social media (note that I keep saying the same thing here to reiterate that it’s not that much extra effort to do this — you just have to take the step!) to design blogs:
Suffice it to say, there are SO many different ways that you can get in front of your ideal clients with more intention and with more frequency. Both of these things will not only keep you top of mind (and thus, more likely to be mentioned/considered for particular opportunities) but you are also then more likely to be sought after and perceived as more of an expert.
Don’t let the term “organic marketing” intimidate you to the point that you choose to avoid it — I spent too much time overthinking this myself! Please learn from my mistakes early on in my career, and get started getting your work out there NOW!
Cheers
