Terri Stone (Editor in Chief of CreativePro) is doing a great job of making sure you’re covered when it comes to Improving Your Bottom Line.

If you owed the government a lot of money on April 15, the past week had you either burying your head in the sand of denial, or determined to put your business in order. And if you didn’t owe money, I’ll bet you wouldn’t turn down ways to make a bigger profit in 2008. No matter where you fall in this continuum, we’ve collected a boat-load of resources to help you overcome business-related challenges.

And a boatload it is.

• Creating Your Future, One Month at a Time
• Avoiding the Heartbreak of Collections
• Negotiating with Vendors For Fun and Profit
• Six Ways to Drum Up Business, in Good Times or Bad
• Negotiating in a Soft Market
• Winning Back Lost Clients
• Don’t Get Creamed Before the Recovery
• Nine Simple Rules for Sustaining Success
• Pump Up The Volume of Your Proposals
• What to Do When a Prospective Client Doesn’t Respond to Your Proposal
• Low-Budget Self-Promotion
• Online Marketing Tools for Creative Pros
• Marketing Smart
• Why Cold Calling is Not So Bad (Really)
• Getting Pricing Right
• Negotiating Fees
• Setting Your Rates
• Setting Rates for Your Small Design Firm
• Seven Strategies for Better Customer Service
• A Little Help from Your Friends

Need more? Then slide over to CreativePro and put your suggestions and questions to Terri. And while you are there, be sure to check out their new design. Nice.

Catherine (cat) Morley | Project Manager
Creative Latitude | NO!SPEC | BoDo team

In my last Marketing Minute, I wrote about tactics that involve an investment of time, talent and brains, rather than cash. Here’s the flip side. Maybe you hit the lottery or had a great night at the casino. Perhaps dear, old and obscenely rich, Uncle Waldo kicked off and left you a tidy sum. Either way, you’ve found some marketing moolah. Now you’re wondering where to drop that marketing dough before it burns a hole in your pocket. You’re in luck. Here’s a list of marketing activities that small businesses see as being the bee’s knees:

• Community relations – 55%
• Website – 47%
• PR/Media coverage – 31%
• Direct mail – 26%
• Yellow pages – 23%
• E-mail marketing – 21%
• Newspaper ads – 21%
• Search engine keywords – 18%
• Telephone marketing – 10%
• Outdoor advertising – 10%
• Print coupons – 6%
• Magazine advertising – 6%
• Radio advertising – 6%
• Web banner advertising – 5%

Source: Entrepreneur Magazine, August, 2005 / Interland

From this research, it appears that developing a program centered around community and public relations, reinforced with a solid website, is just the ticket.

So, get yourself a site, if you don’t already have one. Build it so it’s informative and useful to your audience. Consider adding some helpful tips, how-tos, articles, white papers and such. Think about what kind of information would be of aid to your audience. Put them first and the rest will follow.

Next, get involved in your community. Join a group or two that does good things for your hamlet or metropolis. Fork out some cash and join a business club or two. But, don’t simply join and just sit there … or worse, don’t show up at all. Yup, I’ve seen it happen all too often. People join a club with the best of intentions and they get busy, or are so slow they can’t afford the price of lunch, or they get just plain ‘ole lazy and stop going to meetings and events. The trick with a business club is to get involved and do stuff. Getting active in organizations helps to get you on the radar screen and you’ll have those nice warm fuzzy feelings from being such a nice person. Also, you might consider donating some design time to a worthy cause that’s close to your heart.

Plus, joining a group or two or doing a pro bono gig can give you some ammo for your public relations efforts. For instance, if you chair a committee, write a press release about it. Maybe you did a nifty poster or other piece for a nonprofit. Fire up your word processor du jour and get the news out.

Speaking of your public relations efforts, consider creating a press kit and shooting it out to your media list. To build your list, look through a copy of the Standard Rate & Data (SRDS). You can find one at your local library. The SRDS is the hefty book media buyers use to do their buying thing. It lists loads of information about consumer and trade publications and there’s also a version that covers newspapers. The Web is another source. Don’t forget trade organizations. They often produce newsletters or magazines and also post newsy stuff on their sites. After you have your press kit, keep up the good work by writing a steady stream of news releases and articles. Your first few attempts may not be published, but once an editor sees that you’re a consistent and a reliable source, they’ll start to print your nouns, verbs and even the occasional adjective.

Weighing in at 26%, direct mail’s another good tactic to round out your marketing efforts. Consider creating a postcard, letter of introduction or other mailer as one more touch point. If you choose to do a mailing, don’t forget to follow up by phone. That’s important. You might have a great mailer, but without a follow up strategy, you won’t pull as much as you could. Folks get busy and forget about you and your meritorious mail. What works for me is mailing in small groups of 20 - 25 or so and then making calls about a week after I’ve mailed the pieces. It doesn’t take too much time and it’s manageable. The following week, I repeat the process. Lately, I’ve been mailing out a brief, somewhat humorous, letter of introduction with a fax back form where folks can indicate their level of interest. It’s simply another point of contact and I still do the follow up calls.

Check around with other [noncompetitive] designers, photographers and writers to see how Yellow Page listings and ads work for them. I used to run a Yellow Pages ad, but never picked up a client as a result. I did, however, get loads and loads of calls from people looking for a job or selling aluminum siding. That said, I do know several creatives who get a fair amount of inquiries and work from them.

Ironically, even though designers often create print ads, they aren’t usually a good option to generate prospects. Print ads (newspaper, magazine, etc.) are a good vehicle for products or services that have a solid offer, such as discounts. But for designers, they’re costly and don’t provide a decent pay back in most cases. However, if you have a good niche industry that you serve, it might be worth it to pop an ad into a trade association newsletter or magazine, as a test, for name recognition. You might consider an offer of a complementary design review or a free white paper or report. If it works for you, great, but, odds are a well-placed news release or article will be better to help to position you as an expert.

At the end of the day, be frugal and smart. Spent your money on sensible vehicles that will give you the biggest bang for your hard-earned buck.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt

One of the main marketing issues facing those new to the business of design is finding money for promotional activities. For that matter, seasoned veterans often have the same problem. But, marketing and promoting your business doesn’t require a bucket ‘o bucks. What it does require is some savvy and some time. The stuff I do with my marketing consulting clients is pretty much the same stuff I do for myself. Maybe I’m just frugal (it sounds better than “cheap”) but if I’ve spent more than 100 bucks in the past couple of years on marketing, it’s a lot.

So, what do I do? Glad you asked. For one thing, I publish my blog Inside the Marketing Mind (Which is horribly out-of-date. Long story, but I’ll get on it). There are several options for managing your blog. WordPress and Blogger are free. Typepad and MovableType are fee-based options. WordPress has a bit of a higher learning curve than Blogger, but it’s become the standard in the Blogosphere. As a matter of fact BoDo is created with WordPress.

If you don’t have a blog, I highly recommend that you start one. But, don’t have one that goes on and on about how your day was and what you’ll be doing over the weekend. Develop a topic that will be useful to your audience. Share tasty tidbits of information, relevant links and such. Position your blog to be a valuable resource for your audience. Then, promote the heck out of it.

You can start to promote your blog with a link in your e-mail signature (“sig”). You have one, right? Also have a link in your forum / discussion group sig. You have one of those too, yes? Be sure to include your sig in each and every email you send and forum post you make. Your emails may be forwarded, because they’re jam-packed with all that useful stuff, and then you’ll get a bit of that viral thingy going. Forum posts are often indexed by search engines, so your blog link helps to increase your link popularity.

When you launch your blog, be sure to shoot out a broadcast email to the folks in your address book and include a line asking them to forward it to others who might find it useful. This simple task can jump start your traffic. Also, get your blog listed on Technorati and other blog search engines.

Another tactic that takes more time than moolah is writing articles, reports and tip sheets. If you play your cards right, writing articles can also become an additional revenue stream. How handy is that? Whip up a list of topics and do some research. Create an outline for each and then draft your article.

It’s important to understand that your articles don’t need to be some brilliant new revelation. If you have one, great, but many people read articles as a reinforcement of what they already know.

Poke around the web for sites where you can submit them. Many sites are content starved and will be pleased as punch to publish your witty ditty. Consider submitting to article distribution sites like ArticleCity, eZine Articles and, of course, Creative Latitude. Pick up a copy of Writers Market, target some print publications and send off your prime prose.

Press releases are another good way to generate some buzz, but a lot of folks seem to have a hard time coming up with something newsworthy. Here are 10 ideas to jump start your efforts:

1. New product or service
2. New staff
3. Awards
4. Featured in a magazine
5. Published a tip sheet or special report
6. New location
7. Upcoming speaking engagement
8. Putting on a seminar or workshop
9. An interesting case study
10. Research or survey results

Optimizing your web site for the search engines is also pretty dang important in this day and age. Be sure to have keyword-rich page titles for a start. Search engines tend to look at page titles like the headline of a news story. As such, they expect to see some relevant keyword in there.

Next, make sure your content carries a reasonable amount of keyword density. Not enough and the search engines will think your site doesn’t offers anything useful. On the contrary, too much and they’ll see it as keyword spamming. That can get your site banned. That would be bad.

Foster link exchanges with complimentary sites and get your site listed on industry directories. The trick here is getting incoming links from quality sites. For instance, a link from amazon.com is a whole lot better than a link from joe-blow.com.

This is where your articles will also come in handy. Most sites that publish your articles will include a link to your site. So, the more you’re published, the more links pointing to your site and your popularity goes up. Yup, the web’s become a popularity contest.

Do these few things consistently and the next thing you know you’ll be scheduling work weeks in advance. Well, maybe not the next thing. Give your activities enough time to work.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt

On Monday we had Where’s the Money, Honey? And we’re betting you thought that was that on the subject. Problem is, dealing with money in business never ends. There’s budgets, taxes, and, did we say taxes?

Determining how much it will take

How do you know how much money you’ll need to start up? Easy. Draft a budget. Okay … maybe not so easy, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Fire up your spreadsheet software of choice and start crunching numbers. It might not be a pleasant chore, but it’s a necessary one.

Start by making yet another list

• Target salary (be realistic)
• Rent, or house payment (or percentage)
• Auto expenses (include petrol and upkeep)
• Furniture payment or rental
• Accounting fees
• Insurance
• Legal fees
• Taxes
• Loan payments
• Bank charges
• Computer payments
• Software and upgrades
• Dues and subscriptions
• Reference books
• Internet charges
• Marketing expenses
• Office supplies
• Postage
• Telephone
• Utilities
• Travel

Digital spreadsheets enable you to play with numbers. They also force you to take a realistic view of your situation.

It’s a good idea to draft pro-forma (projected) budgets for three and five years. In that mix goes projected revenue and additional expenses.

If you are not confident in your abilities when it comes to business accounting, one way to improve is by taking a short course at your local college, government funded business start-up group, or Chamber of Commerce. If you learn best on your own, check out what’s available at your local bookstore, or at an online bookstore such as amazon.com.

The Internet has hundreds of online courses on offer. Some free, some for a small fee. Although we don’t have the time now, we’ll get into those at a later time. Promise.

Next up, the BoDo team, visiting authors and guests will share how they’ve handled the money aspects of running a design business.

Until then,
The BoDo Team
cat - nt - jay

Our earlier post lectured on the subject of money. Boring, right? Apologies for that. Handling money is just one of many non design skills needed as business owners.

Continuing along the same subject, Chris, Stefan, Leslie and Neil reach back into their pasts. Back to when they were start-ups. Back where they planned, budgeted, scraped by and made it through to today.

Chris’s money management

How we managed our money:
We first looked at my spouse’s finances and determined whether or not we could even survive on her income alone. After much consideration and crunching of the numbers, we realized we could make it, but life was going to change. Previously, we worked Gonink part-time and essentially had 3 incomes in the house. It wasn’t anything to say “Want to buy this?” and the answer was a resounding “Sure!” As soon as I quit my full-time job, it (purchases) became more of what’s necessary and what is not.

Our plan and budget:
Personal finances were first and foremost and the first thing we did was payoff anything we could. Things such as paying off my truck, personal credit cards, small home loans, etc. By doing so, we gave ourselves more “wiggle room” when it came to buying things for the business before we officially opened our doors. Because let’s face it, when you’re first starting out, your personal finances are going to help supplement your business and you don’t need any extra payments lying around while you’re trying to get the business going.

We looked at several different loan options for our business and we found that a personal loan would work better for us than a business loan. We then would budget x-amount of dollars for equipment purchases, software and stationary stuff like folders, pens, pencils, etc. Once the business opened and some money started coming in, we did our best to focus at least 25% on marketing. This was for advertisements in newspapers, flyers and even extra signage outside of our business. But there is an interesting money factor in any business that I never even considered when I was laying out our business plan and budget. When you look at any business, think of all the ‘invisible’ things you need to buy just to sustain a “life” at work. Things like toilet paper, cleaning supplies, kitchen utensils and other things become after thoughts and even though it seems menial, they are part of running a business.

Chris Tomlinson | Communication Designer
Gonik Design & Print | Gonik Blog

Stefan’s Money

My situation was very fortunate. I was able to take over a company that already had a steady stream of income and a healthy client base. However, I didn’t jump in without some back up plan. So, using my family’s long business relationship with the bank, I was able to secure a pretty substantial small business line of credit. Even my banker was still surprised that at my age I have been able to have some pretty great opportunities fall into my lap. Like I said, I like to exploit opportunities any time I can.

Stefan Bean | President/Creative Director
Pulse Creative Partners, Inc. | BoDo Author | Bean’s Biz

Leslie’s money

Absolutely, I budgeted. And I had several months’ worth of expenses (living and work) saved up. It is much better to be prepared and in my case it was essential as I was single and had no fallback position (except to get a job). That being said, there are lots of resources for start-up funds in the USA. SCORE.org has seminars (very cheap) on financing a business and you’ll meet the very people who can help you at these events.

As for managing living & working expenses, I started from day one with separate accounts, credit cards, and data files. I use Quicken for my home accounts and QuickBooks for my business ones. It is vital to keep your accounts separate. For example, in the USA you can deduct credit card interest as a business expense, but ONLY if it is a credit card you use exclusively for business.

I recommend that, unless you have a strong background and ability in bookkeeping, you get an accountant when you launch your business. It’s a very real (and deductible) business expense…and one which will save you lots more than you’ll spend.

Leslie Burns-Dell’Acqua | Creative/Marketing Consultant & Coach
Burns Auto Parts–Consultants | Burns Auto Parts blog | Podcast | Book

Neil has no money, honey

I did put together a formal business plan and budget, but didn’t really have adequate capital. I ended up funding the start-up with what I made from freelancing. A wing, a prayer and 50 bucks. After a bit, we were generating enough revenue to put some money aside for “start-up” capital … sort of after the start-up.

I was fortunate to have a wife who was a crackerjack sales person. When we were [formally] putting the business together, she handled the sales and client contact during the day while I worked my day job. My salary was enough to cover our living expenses. We did cut out some things like vacations, dining out and such until we had put some money aside to keep us afloat after we went full-time.

Neil (nt) Tortorella | Marketing Manager
Tortorella Design | The Marketing Mind | Creative Latitude | BoDo Team | Marketing Minute

Later in the life of BoDo (no, not now, not in this series), we’ll bring in an expert to write about small business book keeping. Someone who will share their expertise. And make it fun. Well, maybe not the fun part.

Next in the BoDo Niblets: Starting Out and Setting Up Series we’ll discuss the pros and cons of working out or in.

Until then,
The BoDo Team
cat - nt - jay