Here’s a typical scenario. A designer gets a call. The person on the other end of the phone needs a [insert gig du jour]. After a wee bit of a scramble, a proposal or estimate is whipped up, the project is confirmed, money moves and things get to rockin.’ The project moves along and is finally finished. The client is pleased as punch. Our designer gets paid. Everybody’s a happy camper and move on to the next thing on the list. All is well with the Universe.

Or is it?

Although this is the way most independent designers work, it tends to be a first cousin to the notorious “feast or famine syndrome.” Our little scenario is project-based thinking and not necessarily a good idea for you or your client.

Why?

Glad you asked. It’s not a great working model for you because it centers around the one-shot deal. When things dry up you might find yourself flipping burgers to meet your overhead. Although you might look simply smashing in a nifty fast-food uniform, odds are, it’s not what you had in mind.

It’s not a good deal for your client because, frankly, you’re doing a disservice by providing only what they ask for and not using your gray matter to root out what might be of value to them.

I’d like to offer a better idea. Ask a boat load of questions. Get to know your clients’ businesses, their competitive arena, their industry, their audience. In essence, learn all the gory details and become a partner in their success. Then, put on your consultant cap and get to thinking. What would help them out? What ideas can you offer up?

The thing is, just because a client asks for a whatever, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what they really need. By asking questions and digging deep, you can offer ideas that will help your clients meet their goals. You add value to your relationship. You become a needed resource. You separate yourself from your competition, because they’re not doing their homework.

As you learn more about each of your clients’ businesses, you can position yourself as a consultant and offer up suggestions. Now you’re getting somewhere. You’ll find you no longer live project to project. You begin to create projects.

One of the best times to map things out is during an annual client review. December and January are good times to do this. Set up a time to get together with each of your clients. Lunch is a nice idea – on your dime, of course. Review what’s been done during the previous year. What worked well, what could use some improvement and such. Ask them about their goals for the upcoming year.

Take what you learn and give it some thought. What can you do to help your client meet their goals? Put together a proposal and present it to your client.

If you handle this right, you’ll find you can schedule much of your workflow for an entire year, or at least several months out. You’ll know what needs to be done and when. You’ll decrease or eliminate those nutty rush gigs. Your clients can accurately budget for upcoming projects and avoid rush fees. You’ll both sleep better at night because you’ll know what needs to be done, when and how much it’ll cost. No surprises.

In addition, raising yourself to a valued consultant status can justify higher fees. Plus, you become proactive by generating projects rather than sitting at your desk waiting for the phone to ring.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt

Have you ever run into something like this? You get a call from a prospect. They want you to come in for show and tell and discuss a project. You go to the meeting and they love your stuff. As you leave they’re telling you you’re the next best thing to sliced bread and they’ll call shortly to get things started. You’re thinking, “Woo hoo! They like me. They really like me.” You send over your estimate and then …

… nothing. Nada. Zip. Not even a peep.

So, there you sit at your desk thinking. “Sheesh, I thought it was a done deal. Were they just feeding me a line of hooie? What did I do wrong?”

Chill out. Sure, maybe they did get someone else. As my art school teacher used to say, “If they don’t want you, it’s their loss, not yours.” Often though, it’s a matter of changed priorities. In as much as the gig is on your front burner, something may have come up to put it on your prospect’s back burner. They may have been called out of town. It might be that another project took them by storm and their boss is on their back. Etcetera, so forth and so on.

What to do? Well, there’s not much you can do to get your prospect moving in your direction if they don’t want to play. A follow up phone call is in order, of course. If something else has come up, ask when you should call them back. For example, I’ve been working on a prospect, a Marketing Manager with a fairly large company. She contacted me looking for a site for one of their divisions. We met a couple of times and everything seemed to be moving forward. Then I didn’t hear anything. So, I picked up the phone and found out that the division head had put things on hold pending some legal issues and she was simply too busy to get back with me. I asked when I should call her to touch base. She said the mid part of Spring. So, down it goes on my calendar and I move forward with other prospects and projects.

It’s important not to put too much weight on any prospective project until the client signs in blood and the deposit check clears. It’s easy to start counting chickens before they’ve hatched and count on money that’s not in your account yet. Don’t fall into the trap.

You’ll get your fair share of tire kickers along the way, so you’ll want to keep up your marketing and promotion efforts to ensure you have several prospects in the pipeline at various stages of the sales cycle. You won’t close them all and there will be some you shouldn’t even tackle. But, the idea is to juggle several prospects at the same time, rigorously qualify them and focus on the ones you know you can win and will be a good fit for your practice.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt

In my last post I wrote about getting all chummy with your prospects. In this post I’ll address industry research, which is likely the easiest to do.

First, let’s talk reasoning. Why do industry research? It’s important to get a feel for what’s going on in a client or prospect’s industry, if you are to do a good job. You’ll want to learn what the trends are, common challenges, who the major players are, where your client or prospect fits in to the scheme of things and such. With this information under wing, you can not only talk intelligently with your client, your can also create a better design solution. Research and solutions based on facts is what graphic design is all about. Without it, it tends to be nothing more than graphic decoration. You’re better than that.

Your industry research can start at your initial meeting with the client or prospect. Make a point to ask them for industry press (and then read it). Ask them questions about what’s what in their industry. If there’s trade jargon you don’t quite get, ask what this or that means.

Next, fire up your favorite browser and start poke around the Web. Odds are, you’ll find loads of information. Visit trade association sites. They’re usually ripe with current trends and related information. If you have some dough to toss around, trade organizations often have fairly current research studies you can purchase. Sometimes they’re even free.

Google up some articles about the industry. Cruise over to industry consultant sites. Consultants will often have white papers and/or articles that will help you out. Also, consider calling some industry suppliers. They often have a finger on the industry’s pulse and know what’s really going on behind the scenes.

For more involved studies, the Internet offers several survey creation sites, such as Zoomerang.com and Surveymonkey.com. Both offer free surveys and paid options. When your budget allows, research studies, focus groups and such can be conducted by partnering with an outside firm.

Time invested in research will enable you to make confident design decisions. It provides a framework and helps to focus your thinking. Contrary to what some designers may think, research doesn’t stifle your creativity, it empowers it. Without it, you’re often shooting in the dark. Marketing research provides you with the ability to present your solutions and make a sound case for them. Any day of the week, that’ll beat, “Well, here are my designs. Ain’t they purdy?”

Next up, we’ll be addressing the audience, also known as your client’s end customer.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt

Over the past few posts, I’ve written about getting to know your prospect and their marketing environment. The more knowledge you have about them and their industry, competition and customers, the better your position will be to truly demonstrate your value and communicate why your solution is the bee’s knees.

This will be a three part series about how to go about gathering this insightful info. We’ll start with the prospect. Next comes industry research. Finally, we’ll wrap up with the end customer and put all the pieces together.

One Mouth. Two Ears.
In a brilliant flash of intuition, it’s becomes apparent that this quest for knowledge begins with the prospect. Without one of those, there’s no need for the rest. Well … okay … that’s not entirely true. You could start backwards and focus on learning about an industry and its customers. Then you can share some of your investigative results with prospects in that industry. For instance, you might write a white paper about why customers buy more widget in blue packaging than red. Then, get the report out to prospect by mail, email, etc. Even better, have them contact you to get the report.

Alas, I digress. When having an information gathering session with a prospect, it’s important to listen more that you talk. Which, of course, is why humans typically have one mouth and two ears. It’s easy to lose sight of this and start yapping a mile a minute, barely letting your prospect get a word in edgewise.

Play 20 Questions
Before your meeting, whether by phone or face-to-face, prepare your agenda. A questionnaire is a handy tool and will keep you on track so you don’t forget to ask critical questions. Referring to a paper questionnaire also makes you look a wee bit more professional and subtly shows that you have a standard process in place. As luck would have it, BoDo’s sister site, Creative Latitude, has a few handy dandy questionnaires ready-made for you. Or, use them as a jumping off point to develop your own questionnaire.

There are primarily two types of questions – open-ended and closed-ended. Open-ended questions require that the person do some thinking and answer with their own words. Often several of them. Closed-ended questions are succinct. Answers are predetermined responses such as “yes,” or “no.”

For the purpose of your Sherlock Holmes efforts, you’ll want to focus open-ended questions. They require some thought which [hopefully] yields more insight and depth. But, you’ll also want to add a touch of the closed variety here and there.

For example, you might ask, “Do you interact with your customers directly?” That’s pretty much a closed-ended, “yes,” or “no.” Not much info there. So, follow up with an open-ended question like, “How do you do that?” Now we’re getting somewhere.

Just the fact, M’am
Now that we have our questioning style down, what do we ask? To really get to know a company, you’ll, obviously, want to learn about its products and/or services. You’ll also need to find out who their key customers are; if they have any relevant market research in place; who their ideal customer is and what’s important to them; what trade publications are important … and if you can borrow some copies. You’ll also want to dig into the company’s management and culture. Are they stuffy and conservative? Hip and jazzy? Wild and crazy or, perhaps, somewhere in between. This will help you target your presentation style and also the form your solutions take on down the road.

Beyond these, you want to learn about their where they’ve been, where they want to go and why. What have been their biggest challenges? How are they perceived in the marketplace and is that how they want to be perceived?

These ideas should help get you going and are hopefully a springboard for other types of information you can gather. The more you learn, the better off you’ll be, the better your solutions will be and the more valuable you’ll become to your prospect.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt

In my last Marketing Minute, I wrote about ways to spend your marketing budget. But, it’s not good enough to aimlessly throw your dough at some public relations activities, a mailing or even your volunteer efforts. Like William Tell, you need to take careful aim, if you’re to ensure hitting the apple. Anything short could spell disaster – like emptying your budget and having nothing to show for it. No doubt, Tell’s son was pretty glad dear ‘old dad believed in targeting.

In marketing, targeting is simply taking careful aim. It’s about knowing and understanding your best prospect. Who are they (ideally, by name and title)? What is their business and industry all about? What makes them tick? What are their buttons and what can you do to push the right ones?

Beyond this is segmentation. That’s a fancy word for whittling your target audience down into smaller groups that behave the same, have similar, specific needs and such. For example, maybe you broadly target healthcare. That covers a lot of ground and probably more than you can successfully chew off. Plus, there’s a lot of competition. But, you think, “Hmmm … ya know, all those baby boomers are getting up there. I bet targeting the eldercare segment in a radius of 350 miles is just the ticket.”

When you’re targeting your marketing and subsequently segmenting them, don’t forget that not all prospects are created equal. Some will offer better profit opportunities. Those are the ones you should spent more on to reach. Think of them as you’re “A” list and treat them as such.

So, your job is to roll up your sleeves and do your homework. Research possible markets where you can do great work. Ideally, these are markets where you have some experience. Make sure there are enough prospects within it for it to be profitable. Next, segment the broad market into smaller groups and focus your message to addresses their specific needs. Finally, pull out the best of the best and treat them like kings and queens.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt