The secret of winning more clients isn’t about being the cheapest, the fastest, or even the best freelancer within your niche. The best way is to earn your clients’ trust to position yourself as a freelancer is by completing the task that was given to you and having your client feel that they got value for their money.
If you consistently serve your clients well, and you treat them professionally, it is more likely that they will give you positive feedback and referrals at the end of the project. Commendations and referrals are achievable, especially if your clients are extremely satisfied with the way you handle tasks. But how do you build your reputation and position yourself as a freelancer? Here’s what you need to do:
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Create an Impressive Portfolio
Before clients hire freelancers, they investigate if the applicant can deliver quality results. They don’t like to waste time and money hiring the wrong person. The client will look at your portfolio to qualify your skills, personality, and professionalism. This is the basic rule of starting a freelance business.
Your portfolio is your way of introducing your competencies, work history, training, and even show a little bit of your personality to a client. An online portfolio looks more professional than sending prospects links to your past projects and a Word doc of your resume.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money to create your portfolio. There are a lot of plug and play WordPress templates that you can use to build from. Keep your sentences short, simple, and free of errors. If writing is not something you’re good at, ask a seasoned writer to do it for you. In your portfolio, don’t forget to include this essential information:
Your Specialty: What do you do? What you’d like to be known for?
Examples of Your Work: Show your best works. If you’re a writer, publish a sample of your top-quality articles, blogs, biography, interview, etc.
Contact Information: Include your email address, phone number, LinkedIn URL, and Twitter.
Your Personality: Tell the reader about yourself. What are your hobbies and passions. Adding a line or two that shows your personality adds color to your portfolio.
Your Photo: Your client wants to see what you look like, so be sure to include a friendly and professional-looking photo.
Get Positive Feedback from Clients
In this digital age, it becomes easier for prospects to check your background, especially if you’re applying for big projects. Because of this, getting positive reviews from your past clients is very important. Their testimonials can either make or break your chances of getting hired, so you better make sure that most, if not all of them, have kind words to back you up.
Maintaining a positive reputation demonstrates your expertise and character. Your clients’ testimonials and reviews influence how your prospects will react toward your application.
If prospects found out that 90% of your clients are satisfied with your performance, it gives them the impression that you are a valuable freelancer. However, if half of your clients said terrible things about you, that might be enough to spoil your chances. Adding client testimonials to your site can help build your reputation and win your prospect’s trust.
Demonstrate Your Authority
Sometimes, words are just not enough. No matter how many times you say that you’re an expert in doing something, your words will not count if you don’t demonstrate your authority. One way to convince the prospect that you can do the job is to show how you do it.
For instance, if the description in your profile says that you are an experienced graphic designer, you can create a video showing how you develop graphics based on your client’s instructions. On the video, discuss the client’s objective and the steps you do to relate that goal to your drawing. By showing how you do your work, prospects will see your level of proficiency which can convince them to hire you right away.
Continue to Engage People
One secret to freelancing is to build connections by reaching out to people you know and keeping them engaged to your site. One effective way to do this is to create an email list and write to people on that list regularly. Your goal is to make people aware of the service that you offer and compel them to contact you in case they need your help.
Even if you don’t win clients right away, getting engagements is an effective strategy to make prospects aware of who you are and what you can do for them. Since you already introduce your business, they become aware of your presence. When the time comes that they need your service, they might eventually ask for your help.
Build Online Presence
Some prospects want to know what companies trust you before they hire you. When they see that your name appears on my high-quality sites and various company logos are on your page, that gives them the impression that other people do trust you.
Aside from creating your portfolio website and blog, connect with famous bloggers that serve your target market and see about pitching them to do an article about you. You can also write for them for free in exchange for using their logo on your portfolio and social media pages. When you have accumulated several company logos on your site, they help impress people.
