Discover the reasons why your design firm is struggling to attract high-end clients. Whether it’s outdated portfolios, weak positioning, or lack of self-investment, we’ve outlined key points to consider during growth plateaus.
This article was co-written by Daniela Furtado and Molly Randhawa.
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably found yourself caught in a stalemate, desiring high-end clients for your design services, but not being able to reach that next level. Before you throw in the towel, try looking at it from a different perspective. If you’re wondering why you’re not getting high-end clients, the problem might actually be you. Simply put, they’re out of your league.
Getting our dream clients is like dating. Think of it from the perspective of getting a date with a “highly successful person”, if we’re aiming to date someone who’s considered “out of our league,” we need to focus on self-improvement and ensure compatibility with the kind of people we want to be with.
The same thing goes for getting those high-end clients. We can only fake it till we make it for so long. Eventually, if we want to charge more, we have to be more.
You’ve got to put in the work for you to get the work you want. So, how can you hone your skills and effectively market yourself and successfully land big-budget projects? First, you’ve got to know what your inhibitors are, and then you can work through them.
How to Get High-End Clients
These are the habits and common marketing mistakes I see holding back design firms from getting the high-end clients they’ve been waiting for.
You Say Yes To Everything
I like to call this “sales FOMO”. If you’re always saying yes to every project that is good enough, the reality is you’re spreading yourself thin, and clients don’t see you as an expert in a unique problem.
For example, if you want to focus on restaurant design, stop saying yes to residential design. That means being able to discern that even if the budget is good and “technically you could do it”, you shouldn’t.
As scary as it is, be intentional with the projects you take on and trust that better opportunities will come as long as you keep planting the seeds. The more you practice saying no, the more you’re making room for more meaningful opportunities that align with your goals and your desired revenue.
Your Portfolio is Outdated
No one wants to see your work from 2016. It’s 2023. Move on. If your portfolio still features your old work, back when you did anything you could get, it’s time to refresh it. You really don’t have to showcase all the work you’ve done just to fill in the gaps. Get picky with it. Choose 3 to 5 pieces that truly embody the kind of work you want more of.
If you don’t have a portfolio, or your portfolio is full of pieces that don’t align with what you want to do, you’ll need to work your way up. In this case, learn how to pitch yourself. Chase more of what you want, until what you want chases you.
Your Positioning Lacks Focus
Positioning in marketing is like finding your groove on the dance floor. The more you hone in on what you’re good at, the faster you’ll learn, the less you’ll trip and the sooner you’ll find yourself invited to dance with the pros. By articulating your unique value and defining your target customer, positioning can create a magnetic pull that sets you apart from your competitors but draws your target clients closer to you.
Focus, expertise, and simplicity are key ingredients to attract high-end clients. By choosing a clear specialization and committing to it, you differentiate yourself from the competition in highly competitive markets. Adopting a holistic approach, your positioning should inform and shine through everything you do – from your communication to your processes to your pricing. When you do that, business becomes a lot more simple.
At our agency, Findable Digital Marketing, we’ve seen firsthand how designers try to be jacks of all trades. Their branding and messaging become diluted and their portfolio begins to look like potpourri, both of which fail to capture the attention and respect of high-end clients. Understanding what you do really well as a design firm becomes difficult to understand when your positioning is not clear.
We learned this lesson ourselves when we initially positioned ourselves as serving both designers and the cannabis industry. Recognizing the distinct needs of these customer segments, we separated into Findable Digital Marketing for Design Firms and Cannabis Marketing School for Cannabis Retailers.
High-end clients seek specialists and experts who deeply understand their unique requirements and offer tailored processes, and this shift allowed us to cater to their needs effectively.
Your Branding Needs a Refresh
You might not be reaching your target clients because your branding is outdated. While it might have worked for you to use a logo that you created in Canva when you first started, it’s time to elevate your brand with a strategy. The same goes for DIY copy and DIY photography. While it got you to where you are now, it’s holding you back from where you want to be. Before you invest any more time and money into advertising or sales outreach, invest in giving your branding and website design a facelift so that any traffic you send to your website sticks and converts.
If you want to charge a million, you’ve got to look a million, too. It really is about the law of attraction—what you put out is what you’ll get back.
You’re Not Solving High-End Problems
I don’t like the saying, “know your worth”. I think it’s poor business advice we give to creatives and designers.
While a middle-class client may pay $20k for your services, an upper-class client may pay $200k for the exact same services.
This doesn’t have to do with “knowing your worth” but it has everything to do with “knowing their problems”. In consumer psychology, this is called framing and messaging. Framing is the language, images, and context we use to articulate the value of something.
Value is relative. In a free market, the value of your skills and services is measured by your ability to solve other people’s problems. The deeper and more expensive their problems are, the more valuable your solutions are.
If you’re not getting high-end clients, it could be that you’re not solving high-end problems. Maybe that means you need to tailor your service to address deeper problems, but most likely you need to change the way you articulate the value of your services. Your current sales pitch got you to where you are now but it’s not going to get you to where you want to be.
Trust the Process, and then Refine It
The secret is the sauce. And the sauce is your process. If your process is stale or stuck in the past, you’ll stay having no sauce.
While your optimism and eagerness tell you that you are ready for bigger projects and even bigger budgets, you may not be landing them because high-end clients can see right through the cracks in your processes. It may be time for you to update your approach or do some internal inventory.
With every project, you have the opportunity to make your process and service even better. If you use a flywheel approach, this progress keeps building momentum, rather than just pouring out and waiting for the next client to come in like a funnel. It’s like a self-sustaining cycle where you keep improving as you go. And trust us, your marketing efforts and portfolio will reflect that growth. However, if your flywheel gets too big and you’re still not getting closer to those higher-quality clients—there’s probably a gap in your process, services, portfolio, or marketing, which will require you to tighten it up or it will show up as not being ready.
If these high-end clients come to you before your processes are ready, they will give you a whopping. Very quickly, you’ll see that although you’d really love to take on the project, you can’t. That might be because you don’t have the refined skills, processes, equipment, or team to execute a project by their standards. Your unreadiness will show up in the sales call, and in the negotiation, and if you’ve made it past the initial screenings, the cracks in your foundation will show in the first few months of working together.
They’ll either challenge you to catch up to their standards, or you’ll crumble trying—sometimes pretty miserably. No matter how it goes, these are tremendously valuable learning opportunities and it’s a sign that you’re on the right track to fulfilling your dreams of getting luxury projects.
The Takeaway
If you want to attract high-end clients and take your design services to the next level, you’ve got to put in the work and make those changes. To recap, start by updating your portfolio, focusing on a specific area of expertise, and saying no to projects that don’t align with your goals. Improve your branding and invest in professional resources to enhance your image. Don’t forget to refine your processes and adopt a mindset of continuous improvement. It’s okay to make mistakes along the way, as they can be valuable learning opportunities. By focusing your efforts, showcasing expertise, curating your portfolio, and avoiding dilution, you’ll be better positioned to attract and serve high-end clients effectively.
How to Work with Us
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Check out the five questions to ask yourself before hiring an agency. If you think we’d make a good team, contact us today!
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