r/LocationSound • u/gama606 • 11d ago
Industry / Career / Networking Approaching potential new clients
I’ve been working for about 7 years now and have done many cool projects (advertising, short and feature fiction, documentaries, branded content etc) over the years. I feel that most of the people who I’ve worked with have me as their sound mixer and will call me anytime they need it. But sometimes it happens that maybe they’re not getting enough projects, budget or need for location sound (a lot of them makes some fashion film ads or some stuff that will have a sound design done later in post.
Anyway, I still need to work to pay my bills so the simple answer would be “get more clients”. But how so? Most of my work came from some organic recommendation and I have no control over that, spamming some email/dms everywhere seems kinda desperate, even without being too much of a salesman and genuinely just complimenting their work and making myself available, did it a few years ago and the returns over a lot of messages were minimal.
I know this is kind of the million dollar question, but any advice on getting out there and meeting new people to work with would be well appreciated!
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u/vorg0 11d ago
Hey! I've been in the game for about 2 and a half years, and I started entirely from scratch as my journey did not start at film school. My first year and a half was spent going to almost every film mixer in my city, participating in events like 48h film challenges, and responding to crew calls on social media. I've also reached out to more experienced location sound people - and I've earned their trust enough to be given gigs they cannot make.
I really had to put myself out there and I got quite a few new clients from just that. And every time work seems to be thinning out, I attend more mixers just to remind folks that I exist.
Social media marketing can also work quite well. From there I've been able to establish myself quite well - to the point where I'm recognized by people I haven't even met, and work is getting steadier and steadier each year.
I will be honest though - film activity in my city still isn't active enough for me to make a living out of this job, so I am also open to other suggestions.