In the Know

Here’s a new post from our friend Conrad Winter who we feature on our blog every once in a while. He’s a terrific copywriter and always has great things to say. We felt this was very relevant to design presentations and marketing.

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Year after year I wonder if the effort is worth it. Between vacations, half day Fridays, and Summer day dreaming… Are enough people in their offices to bother with sales? And if they are, are they thinking about business?
Maybe schools shouldn’t be the only ones with Summer’s off.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure. Whenever I approach sales in the summer, I think of it as planting seeds. I don’t expect to hear much back until after Labor Day. I hope that all the mailings, calls, email blasts, social networking was memorable enough. I want to be the first person they think of when it’s time to spend that end of year marketing budget. When people send there kids off to school and they can concentrate on work again, I start to get the calls in.

It’s been said time and time again… When things are slow and your not making money, it’s the most important time to market your company. Your bound to get a few sales from the efforts at the time of marketing. In addition, you need to market so there are clients finding you in the months ahead. Market for the future. When you start marketing, expect the bigger results several months after you start.

Lastly… A classic rule of marketing is getting your company name in front of people as much as you can. Some say you need to get your name in front of your potential audience seven times before they remember you. The trick is, mix up the techniques. Not all techniques of marketing cost a lot of money or time.

So plant your seeds in the Summer and hope for a good Fall harvest.

I got an email from one of our freelancers/friend. I found the email to be very true, so I’m sharing with you. I think this is very good advice.

Written by Conrad Winter, Backpocket Copywriter (backpocketcopywriter.com)

Learn from My Mistakes – Don’t do it yourself.

I know how it is to have a little project that seems so small and simple that it would just be easier to do it yourself than involve an outside contractor. Especially with what’s going on today, we’re all looking for ways to cut costs. But it’s a subtle trap. I’ve fallen for it; I’ve made my own business cards and designed self-promotion brochures. I figured I’d save some money and it would look fine. Yeah, right. When I think about all the time I invested in these projects and remember the end product, I just have to shake my head. Who knows how much business I lost because my materials looked like Elmo made them. Who knows how many opportunities I missed while I spent days doing things a professional designer could have done on a single cup of coffee. If I’d kept it up, it surely would have been the death of my business. Luckily, I learned my lesson, and now I always hire a designer. This is my advice for marketers caught in a do-it-yourself vs. do-it-for-me quandary:

Never compromise on professionalism. One convoluted flyer or disjointed landing page can make prospects think you don’t have it together.

Don’t rely on favors. I pay designers to do my stuff. Why? Free work is worth exactly what you pay for it. Deadlines aren’t hard and fast and you “get what you get.”

If you’re going to do it yourself, run it by at least one critic who will be brutally honest.

And if you’re still going to do it yourself, never assume your prospects will think that the imperfections of your do-it-yourself creation are charming. Fix them.

And if you’re seriously committed to doing it yourself, set a cap for the amount of time you’ll spend. Know when to get help from someone who will design it professionally or write it professionally (like me).

And if there’s no way I can convince you not to do it yourself, promise me you’ll treat it like a real project with a stated objective and real expectations.

Hope this made you think. And remember I’m here to help no matter what the size of your writing project. Together we’ll give it the professional and creative edge it needs.

In the graphic design industry, companies always seem to think the same. I’ve worked in a ton of design studios and all of them targeted the same fortune 500 companies within the drivable region of them. (more…)