How to Find Mural Clients

Apr 8

Let the true mural magic begin! You’re ready to seek out your first mural clients.

But first, I want to highlight an important point that I mentioned in some of the other articles: document everything you do related to murals, especially your “practice” murals. All of that practice is not only building your skills in large-scale painting but also giving you content to share on social media.

Social media content that documents your mural work creates credibility for you as a mural artist. It gives your audience a reason to trust that you know how to do the work. The more “behind the scenes” evidence you show of painting murals, the more confident potential clients will be that you are the real deal.

So, at this point you’ve (hopefully) been practicing murals for a while. You’ve been documenting your work on a consistent basis. You have lots of examples of your murals and you’ve been sharing those examples on social media.

If you haven’t already gotten requests, now is the time to open up your booking for mural clients!

Personal Network

The easiest way to start finding clients is to let your personal network know that you are available for mural work. Include a few examples of your murals and those behind the scenes images. Make sure you have an idea of your pricing structure so you can field questions as they come in.

Since I tend to use my Instagram grid primarily for business communication it’s not the place I go to find my “personal network”. To communicate with friends and family I use email, DM, and text. Keep this kind of communication personal - a friendly announcement on Facebook or a mention in someone’s DMs.

(Don’t send a form email to everyone on your contact list!)

As for what you should say: ask your personal network to refer you to people or businesses they think might be interested in murals. Most of my mural work has been a result of word of mouth referrals or people who saw my work online. Your personal network is a great resource for getting the word out.

Business and Creative Networks

Another way to find mural clients is to make sure your audience knows you’re available. This is kind of an extension of asking your personal network, with some tweaks for the ways you interact with your audience online. (It’s also how I got my first *real* mural painting job with Skillshare.)

If you’re active on social media, make sure you’re regularly posting about your mural work! Include several posts that are all about how you are now doing murals and are available for hire.

Put “muralist” in your bio on Instagram. Make sure mural work is included on your website. If you have a video channel, get some videos of you working out there. Are you noticing the theme, here?

No one will ask you to do a mural if they don’t know you do murals. So make sure they know!

Put out a Call for Clients

Finally, you can take the previous tip one step further by posting on social media about looking for specific projects. I started doing this during my year working abroad. In each new place I was going to be working, I would put out feelers through social media + my personal networks and let them know I was available for mural work while I was in their area.

I’d say something like, “Hey! In Cusco for a month and looking to paint murals for local businesses, particularly around food or travel themes. Reach out if you know anyone / are someone who’d be interested!” along with my contact information.

The fact that I was traveling (and the window of opportunity was limited) made the talking points pretty painless and I ended up doing some super fun murals for clients like Supertramp Hostel (Peru).

Bonus: Donate a Mural

For extra mural-cred, consider donating a mural to an organization close to your heart. I got my first gigantic mural gig by donating it to my elementary school!

There were a ton of (non-monetary) rewards in exchange for the time and expense of doing this mural: the karmic lift of creating something beautiful for my old school, the experience of creating a huge exterior mural, lots of eyes on my physical work, and tons of content to share on social media.

Note: you might get some opportunities to donate murals as you are working your way up (ie: practicing and building your portfolio). But don’t take on a huge free mural project until you have some experience under your belt - otherwise you’re going to burn through a lot of extra time and materials learning as you go.

Double Bonus: Other Ideas

I don’t use these techniques very often, but I’ve heard that other muralists use them with varying levels of success and wanted to get them on your radar in case you feel like giving ‘em a try:

Cold pitching directly to a client: put together a PDF of your work (or better yet, a mock up of an appropriate piece of yours in their actual space if you can find a photo) and send it directly to the client. Introduce yourself, say why you love their brand/business, and let them know where they can contact you if they’re interested. You can typically find contact information on a company’s website, or if it’s a large organization do a LinkedIn search for the appropriate contacts to send it to.
Mocking up murals: Find photos of blank walls (either stock photography or your own photos) and Photoshop your artwork on top of them. Share these photos on social media and in your portfolio to try and attract mural clients.

A few final mural-related thoughts:

Understand that your first mural clients are most likely going to be smaller clients. A bigger brand like Larabar is generally not the first gig out of the gate. I’m sharing my own mural journey so you understand that mural work - like any other art form - takes refinement.

Mural work is, by nature, imperfect. It’s created by a human being (not a machine) so don’t beat yourself up over imperfections. Plan well, execute well, and be delighted with a job well done! The “imperfections” of human work are the things that make murals unique and authentic.

Murals are a time investment. It takes longer to create murals than it does to create an 8”x10” piece of art. And it takes longer to build a client base for murals than it does for smaller art forms.

Don’t get discouraged if the mural branch of your creative business is a slow burn. Keep creating murals and sharing the work. Keep improving the quality of your work and you WILL get bigger and better clients!

Ok friends! I hope I’ve convinced you to try doing a mural or ten. They are so much fun, and so satisfying, and they make you feel truly amazing about your work because it feels so cool to see your art up on a huge wall! I hope you now have the information and the confidence to go create that feeling for yourself.

If painting huge murals for big corporate clients is your dream job, get started on realizing that dream! Go tape some paper up to your wall and sketch out a small mural. Break out the tablet and mock up a large mural on a stock photo. Get started. And remember that, like any art, your first attempts won’t be your best attempts. Every time you create you will improve.

Don’t wait for mural skills, experience, or knowledge to magically descend on you. Go out and get them!

x Lauren