It’s time to be proactive and strategic about
drumming up new business.

Ask a photographer or illustrator how they get their clients and most will say, “Through word of mouth.” They say it with pride, as if word of mouth is, hands down, the best way to get clients. But is it?

If you think about it, relying on word of mouth actually puts you in quite a precarious position. Here’s why:

  • You are at the mercy of others, but you don’t know who. Word of mouth is essentially taking whatever comes along and relying on someone – anyone – to spread the word about you and your services.
  • You are forced to take projects and clients you might otherwise decline. When those referrals come in, you are in a difficult position. You have to take them, whether they are right for you or not, because you don’t know what’s coming next or when it’s coming.
  • You are not in control of your business. This is the worst position to be in because you are in a reactive, instead of proactive, mode with no strategy underpinning your efforts. You don’t control who finds you, when they find you, what they need, how much they need. It’s serendipity, not strategy, leading the way, determining who you work for and what you do for them.
  • You are not in charge of the quality or the quantity of the referrals that find their way to you. And sometimes the work is of such low quality that you may not even want to show in your portfolio.

Customer relations can sometimes be problematic with clients who come through word of mouth. They usually aren’t your ideal or dream clients. The worst-case scenario is that they are “amateur” clients: They complain more, have done very little planning and have unrealistic expectations of both the process and the results; they are inexperienced when it comes to working with creative professionals and don’t know how much it costs, resulting in sticker shock. If they’re disorganized, it can end up costing you time and money.

You may be more comfortable pursuing a “professional” client such as an employee or agency spending a corporation’s money, not their own. They are used to working with creative professionals and will usually tell you up front what their budget is. They have clear objectives in mind and they understand what’s necessary to support the process that will generate those results. They are usually a pleasure to work with.

Don’t misunderstand. There’s nothing wrong with word of mouth. It’s great to hear from a pre-qualified prospect who is already sold on you. Some of your best clients have probably found you because someone was in the right place at the right time saying the right thing to the right person. Plus, when a happy buyer or client sings your praises, the prospect converts much more easily into a client because a level of trust has already been established.

The problem is you can’t rely on word of mouth. It happens when it happens. And for many artists, it hasn’t been happening much lately. Even high-profile photographers and illustrators who relied exclusively on prestige and word of mouth are now struggling. The pipeline dried up quickly last year and there was no marketing foundation in place to build on: no lists of targeted buyers, no marketing tools, and very few existing relationships with warm prospects ripening like grapes on a vine.

So what’s a commercial artist to do?

The alternative to word of mouth is a Marketing Machine: a structured campaign through which you actively pursue, over time, the prospective clients you choose until some of them (usually a small percentage) have a need and hire you. This is why you need lots of buyer contacts. It’s a numbers game, there’s no doubt about that.

A Marketing Machine is made up of three elements:

  • The List: A list of targeted and qualified prospects who buy your services.
  • The Tools: Between three and five effective marketing tools. You can use email marketing, online and offline networking, direct mail, cold calling, etc., but the choice of tools should be based on what you know your prospective clients are most receptive to.
  • The Action Plan: A simple plan outlining what to do and when to do it – tasks that are literally scheduled into your daily calendar and treated as seriously as you would treat a client project.

Once you have your Marketing Machine in place, you start reaching out, in person, on the phone, via email, in as many ways as you can. Yes, that means fighting through the clutter of what’s already in front of these buyers to get a sliver of their attention, just long enough to make a positive impression. Then you stay in touch, little by little, getting a dialogue going, all in an effort to build trust and eventually persuade this company that you are a great fit for them.

This is not difficult; it just takes effort. There’s nothing passive about it and now is the perfect time for nimble commercial artists to consistently apply these sound marketing practices to develop a strong pipeline.

Then, when someone asks how you get your clients, you can say, “I carefully select the ones I want to work with and I pursue them proactively until they have a project that is a perfect fit for me.”