Updated Sep 25, 2024

Landing the Right Clients as a No-Code Freelancer: Tips for Finding Your Perfect Match

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You aren’t for everyone!

This motivational-sounding adage is actually a brilliant piece of business advice if you’re running a freelance service or an agency. This means that finding the right client as a no-code freelancer is perhaps the most important task to guarantee success.

Niche marketing is all about finding the right clients, and helping them find you. Choosing the right clients can ensure business success, even when it seems like a crazy idea to turn clients away. Here’s why:

Casting your net too wide means you’ll spend a lot of time filtering through leads to find the right ones. As a freelancer or agency, you have limited time to spend on business development – use it wisely!

With the right clients, you can expect to be paid your market value, find likeminded people that will be interested in your offering, and get better referrals too. This helps you build the portfolio that you want as a freelancer or agency.

You might know about the benefits of finding the right clients, and the downsides of working with the wrong ones – but how do you go about finding the right clients for you?

In this guide, we’ll give you the tips and practices you need to build a freelance or agency business that works for you!

Use Adalo’s Platform for Experts

The Adalo Experts program connects talented makers, UX designers, and software builders with clients that need those services. Adalo Experts build apps for clients using the Adalo platform and network of makers as a client base. Most experts agree with Eric Goins from Flywheel Agency and fellow expert Zaylan Jacobsen that, “A lot of our clients come direct from Adalo Experts program.”

This presents a great opportunity to find your initial client base. Simply sign up for the Adalo Experts program, and create a profile that attracts the leads you want. Ranking higher on the Adalo Experts page is directly related to getting the most leads.

Here are our top tips to get a higher ranking:

Tip 1: Have great apps on your profile

Your portfolio helps you stand out, build trust, and convince a prospective client that you have what it takes to build their app. If you haven’t worked anywhere before, consider building a couple of apps for yourself, or take on one or two free projects for a prospective client and then ask them to write a testimonial.

Tip 2: Have a professional profile

This goes a long way in creating a good, solid impression to a prospective client – and it’s likely to get you more referrals too!

Tip 3: Position yourself strategically

Show your speciality: If there’s a particular type of app that you’re great at building, or maybe certain features that you have more experience with, use them to your advantage and highlight those specializations.

Make yourself standout: This is where branding goes a long way to help you stand out. You can design a logo for yourself, or if you work with others, you can give your agency a name. (More on branding later in the blog!)

Use Other Freelancer Platforms

There are plenty of great platforms to find clients – and Adalo encourages freelancers to sign up for as many platforms as possible! To improve your chances of success with finding the right clients, keep in mind these points:

Make sure you’re proficient in the skills that you list
Curate your profile to highlight those skills
Include a professional photograph and any other documents that might improve your prospects: certifications, testimonials, etc.
A few of the major platforms to look for freelancing projects/work include: Upwork, CodeMap, Fiverr, Heep, Toptal, and Wellfound (formerly AngelList)

A quick note about showcasing your skills and services: The skills section of your portfolio or profile simply lists down what you’re able to do, or what you’re good at. You need to convert that into what it provides a client in the real-world to turn your skills into a service. If you are an Adalo maker who is skilled with Xano, Zapier or Airtable, you should be reinforcing and highlighting your different skills.

For example, your skills might be:

App building
Web development
UX design
Data analysis
Project management

Your services can then be:

Building high-performance end-to-end apps and websites
Creating seamless user experiences across digital platforms
Managing multi-stakeholder projects for software development
Helping individuals and SMEs promote their products and services online
Helping make data-driven decisions by finding answers to important business-centric questions through data analysis

Get Your Leads Organized

The best thing you can do to keep leads coming your way is being prompt with communication. Stay organized and respond promptly all through your relationship with your leads and clients.

Here are some pro-tips!

Drip email to prospective clients so that you stay top of their mind
Try reaching out to them on phone if they give phone number
Have clear directives for what the next steps are to move things along
Put into place best practices so that you handle every lead with a maximum effectiveness for least work
Always be closing!

Now we know this can get difficult once work begins coming in, so you might want to try using a customer relationship management (or CRM) tool to stay on top of things. You will also be able to use a CRM to make a workflow.

Ramp Up Your Networking

Create more opportunities to find clients for yourself by networking! Freelancing doesn’t have to mean a lone wolf journey – networking isn’t ass difficult as it sounds. If you understand how the network effect works, you can use it to your advantage to increase your pipeline of leads. Once you’ve done some networking effectively, your clients then act as salespeople, spreading the word about your services far and wide by word of mouth.

It will help for you or your agency to be present on professional platforms like LinkedIn and on social media sites like Twitter. This will help you look for and connect with prospective clients. It can also give you project and app ideas, and keep a pulse on where the industry is headed.

Here are some ways you can network (even if you don’t enjoy it!)

Contributing to online forums
Commenting on articles and other people’s content
Writing blog pieces and articles can increase your visibility as a freelancer.
Join groups and discuss solutions and your approach

If people stumble upon your content, it’s likely that they’ll see you as an expert in your field. They will be more likely to hire you or recommend you to others. To help drive referrals, you can ask your happy clients to tell their friends about their experience working with you. It helps to have some material they can share easily with their network, like your website, portfolio, or contact details.

Collect Data Wherever You Can

An important part of the process is to keep improving, and the best way to do that is by collecting data – plenty of data! Here are some good places to start: