Hey, October is Self Promotion Month! by Rebecca West
maybe you’ve started to notice a little surge in business activity once the season changed? october is the beginning of the 4th quarter and the big lead-in to the holidays, so it’s time to start those year-end pushes in the promo department. west outlines 6 points of self-promotion you can use at all these mixers and networking events that keep popping up on the calendar.
it may seem that the last heat wave just left, but the change of the season is upon us and it’s time to start planning holiday gifts & mailings. The year-end holidays are a great time to take a minute out of the daily grind to show your appreciation and send something special to your partners, vendors and clients to acknowledge how much you appreciate working with them. in the grand scheme of your brand, client appreciation is an opportunity to expand your brand personality and strengthen relationships by showing people that you value them beyond the work you do together.
the best way to make sure this all goes off without a hitch is to plan ahead so you can strategize what you want to send, work with the designers and vendors you want, and avoid rush charges with vendors that are overloaded with the holiday onslaught. to make it easy, use this guide to consider your approach, decide what to send and source people who can make it happen.
1: define your recipient list
since the number of recipients will determine which items or print processes make the most sense, the first thing to do is sit down with your client & vendor list and determine how many pieces you’ll be sending. some of us have 20, while others will have 2000 and beyond. you’ll also want to determine if there are tiered groups within your list, such as clients and partners above a certain dollar amount or who comprise a majority of your business and time vs. contacts you wish to keep in touch with. if you have a long list of names, this will help you decide how to break it down and find solutions for each group of recipients at each level.
2. give yourself enough time
consider that printing and mailing alone will take about 3 weeks on a standard turnaround, and that you’ll want to beat the rush and mail by the first week of december. if you’re working with a designer on a print piece, you’ll want to allow at least a month for the design process [this is a rough estimate, but to insure you can get the results you want with the designer of your choice, over-estimate here]. similarly, if you are ordering cards or branded gifts, you’ll want to build in time to research the ideal gift and time to have it customized. the turnaround will vary from vendor to vendor, but again, plan on about a month. that means, yes, it’s time to get the ball rolling in early october.
3: consider the type of communication best suited to your brand
i’ll get it out of the way upfront: a few options i’m not going to focus on here are pre-packaged gift baskets or branded gifts that involve putting your logo on a gift item. there are endless resources for going that route, and if those are avenues you want to take, my only advice is to customize it as much as possible. send your baskets with a personalized card, and if you brand a gift with a logo, make it a useful & relevant item to your target market. there is also the choice to donate to a the charity of your choice, which is what earthlink did in the sample above, detailing the contribution in an insert with the card. since there are so many worthwhile organizations out there, my advice is to choose the one that’s right for you and send a little information about them to your recipients to raise awareness.
there are a few levels of personalized communications that i think are key for holiday mailings. the most universal is a designed card that shows your branding with a thoughtful message, something that can be sent to all levels of clients & contacts. if it isn’t in your budget to hire a designer and print a card, or if your quantity of recipients makes printing cost-prohibitive, before you run off to a big card company, consider shopping around in your design community or on a craft site like etsy for designers who do packs of original art for screen-printed or letter press cards in the quantity you need. look for something you identify with that will also communicate well to your clients.
if a holiday card was already in the budget and you want to go a bit bigger with a branded gift, consider some sort of holiday kit that will be useful, helpful & memorable with your clients. i have seen some really nice packages where companies partner to create joint gifts they can send to both company’s holiday lists. a great example was something we received from the department of graphic sciences last year, which included a branded coffee mug, a set of illustrated cards by the designers, and a pack of artisan brittle by morning glory confections. this gift was a great combination of something we could use with their logo, artistic objects we could send to our own colleagues, and some really unique sweets to enjoy, all of which promoted & introduced each partner in the process [and here i am talking about it nearly a year later]. check with your favorite neighborhood shops, local farmer’s market vendors, or contacts in your chamber or industry organization for artisan food or specialty item vendors you might click with. or leave it to us–your designer will be able to come up with some great suggestions.
this is really the branding part of the project, considering your constituents and finding that special mix of what sends the right message from your company and what hits your recipients in a way they’ll remember and appreciate. if you’re stuck on how to brainstorm on this, ask your employees. they often have relationships with your clients that you don’t, and can have great insight about gift ideas. if you want a more strategic approach, talk to your designer or brand strategist about how to extend your brand to your holiday gifts. we’ll be able to take your goals and corporate voice and personal connection to your clients, and create a memorable communication with everyone on your list.
4: get to work
if you have your list together and have some idea of where you’re ready to start, it’s time to get moving. if you have a designer on staff or on hand for these projects, make the call and put a production schedule on the calendar. if you need help finding the right designer, i have helpful information on how to find the right one for your business. or hey, you’re talking to one right now, ask away!
[l-r: genevieve margherio, joy worthen, kirk roberts, and me! photo by bruce wayne stanley.]
before i ran my own practice, i probably would have laughed at anyone who told me how much networking i’d be doing, and how much i’d enjoy it. i used to think of it as something i had to make time for, or something i regretted not doing when it came time to move from one job to another. sure, it’s something i do for business, but if you do it right you make a lot of friends. and then you have margaritas!
the creative freelancer conference stressed to us that we’re not competitors, but co-workers. even in leaner times like these, there is enough work for everyone. i prefer to see us all as choices, a client could choose me, or one of my colleagues, and they do so for a reason that is not about us competing because we don’t offer the same thing. addressing this upfront brought the level of camaraderie way up, and allowed a lot of us to talk in-depth about our experiences in business, with clients, in times of challenge and success.
once we all got honest and brave and started asking the revealing questions, this theme emerged that i hadn’t noticed before: creatives are highly empathic people. we can take on your stories, information and motivations, consider them carefully, and spin them into communication vehicles that become far more than the sum of their parts. but there’s this fine line between being empathetic with communication efforts, and taking on client concerns to the degree that we compromise the quality of our work with compromised time & budgetary resources. my overall takeaway about creative personality disorder is that we have to put our abilities to wrap our heads around our clients in check when it comes to business negotiations and set realistic limits so we don’t end up over-committed & under-compensated.
on the upside though, creative personality disorder leaves you with a room full of really awesome, funny, quirky, highly social people who aren’t around this many other people like us nearly often enough. i was networking before i got there, rooming with beth goldfarb which has turned out a great new friendship with a fantastically talented colleague. i think we met our first conference buddies in the hallway on the way in. everyone was itching to say hi & see each other’s business cards and connect, it was so exciting to meet everyone, share laughs & design hugs. this lunch, pictured above, was a group of 12 people who had to split into 3 tables. the 3 designers i sat with all have uniquely beautiful work [go see for yourself], but more than that, they’re super nice people [and their clients have a lot to say about how much they love working with them].
which brings me to the session on networking—socially & online, that is:
the astoundingly simple secrets to making social media work for you with colleen wainwright
i’ll admit right off the bat that i’ve seen this talk twice and i didn’t take notes this time around. wainwright is a veritable portal to so many fantastic sources of information, i honestly preferred to watch her talk than write things about it. i’m lucky and i see her often enough that many of these things have become conversation topics rather than bullets in a talk, so i encourage you do to the same. reach out to her, talk to her—hire her to help you figure out your marketing strategy! in the meantime, i’ll do my best to give you the goods:
– social media online is a new way to network with a much bigger pool of people than would be sustainable without the internet.
– online networking is all in how you use it. choose your voice first, then create a consistent presence online.
– be useful, be specific, be nice: talk about relevant things directly to your audience in a supportive, helpful way.
– create a manageable list of networking sites you can commit to regularly maintaining.
– don’t be afraid that it’s a time-suck: you determine your level of involvement.
– if you feel overwhelmed, lurk awhile before jumping in. when you feel comfortable, start participating.
– approach participation from a place of support. post helpful info, offer to connect people you think would like to meet.
– speaking of awesome, go read these free reports by chris guillebeau and consider his call to “be awesome.”
– and check out chris brogan and his book, trust agents.
if you need some cold-hard facts about social media and the effect & reach it has, this video sums it up nicely:
my brain is just starting to wind down and parse the creative freelancer conference i attended last week, august 26-28, 2009 [produced by HOW magazine & marketing mentor]. in a nutshell, it was an incredibly motivating, inspiring, and highly connective conference that got all us indie professionals in an awesome hotel setting and let us loose on a varied intensive of marketing, business and management education.
i was particularly curious about the opening night presentation by petrula vrontikis, what will your freelance business be when it grows up? this session addressed growing your business in a sustainable way so that it is always balanced and relevant to your markets, clients, and the ways you work over the course of your career. vrontikis outlined many of the common motives, pros & cons of working on your own, and main points to revisit over the course of your career to stay on track. below is a list of some of the key takeaways i liked:
– keep your skills fresh & ahead of the curve; add relevant skills as the market demands.
– happiness is sustainable: some will be happier hiring employees while others will prefer working solo.
– diversify your work across a few industries and clients for variety and security.
– be voraciously involved in your target markets so you can stay ahead & change with them.
– balance your billable work with good management, relationship & professional practices.
– it’s easy to let life changes compromise your career—stay involved and commit to your practice.
– never become complacent about personal creative growth—it’s a necessity, not a luxury.
– work directly with the visionary of any project, for the sake of the quality of your work.
– be honest with clients when they have not allocated enough time or money to a proposed project. the quality of your work depends on having proportionate time and money to the task at hand.
my favorite piece of advice was “you should be working differently at 40 than at 30. and differently at 50 than at 40, and so on…” a healthy trajectory is one that moves off an emphasis on the daily grind and toward writing, speaking, mentoring and generally giving back some of your experience to the industry at large. timely advice as i’ve recently been in touch with LA area chamber‘s pillar program about speaking to high school kids about graphic design.
more about the other topics of this fantastic conference will follow throughout the week. i wanted to recap it all in one post, and realized i had way too much to say!
Client and Employee Appreciation Events, To Have or Not To Have? by Janis Flagg
as a graphic designer with a lot of event design experience as well as a handful of excellent event planners & producers in my midst, i’m glad to see an article addressing what has happened to the event industry in the economy downturn. appreciation events are some of the most impactful ways to reaffirm and say thank you to the clients, vendors and employees who stick by you and your business. flagg outlines how events have multiple functions of marketing, thanksgiving, and asserting a confident position in the market with your most important supporters.
today’s LA area chamber networking exercise was about follow-up and follow through in making and keeping contacts. i always like to think i’m better at this than i am, but that seems to be a trend very common with people who do a lot of networking [i recently heard some advice that simply following through will put you in the top 95% of your field simply because people don’t do it!].
the idea was to go through a list of conditions of meeting people, and collaborate on what follow-up efforts best fit each situation. i worked with pamela edwards of innovative feng shui on improving our follow-up, the questions & answers are below:
what is the first thing you do when you receive a business lead?
research the lead online, email to make contact.
how do you acknowledge receipt of the lead?
thank the referrer with a personal call or email.
how do you qualify the lead?
research online, ask the referrer for background information, make a research call directly.
what steps do you take to contact the lead?
initial email with an invite to connect, follow up phone call, send an intro pack by mail.
what’s your strategy for connecting with the lead?
once qualified, set up a personal meeting to get to know each other and our businesses goals and see if we can work together. if not, see if we can refer each other.
what is your personal commitment to returning phone calls?
i return phone calls within 24 hours [personally, i prefer to find a best time to talk rather than return calls within an hour if i’m less focused].
what is your personal commitment for responding to emails?
i reply to emails asap [for some reason i can always craft a good email response in a busier setting than a phone call, so i do what i’m best at on the asap schedule].
how do you keep the referring person abreast of the lead?
rather than keep a set schedule for this, i do it at the natural milestones of the relationship. if the lead and i make plans, i take time to thank the referrer again. if i don’t hear from them, i give a week or so and ask the referrer if there is anything i should be aware of. if we work together, i usually follow up with the success of the project and another thanks [you can’t be too thankful for good referrals!].
what do you do to acknowledge leads that result in new business?
i don’t currently have a set discount kickback for referrers, but i will often kick down small favors or package extras with projects for those of my clients who have sourced new work for me.
how do you respond to requests for information on your business?
i have a lot of channels in place for clients and prospects to find information in their preferred forum. i usually invite them to view my web site with direct links in an email, i ask if they’d like to receive an intro pack, which is a printed sample of my work and intro to my services. i also post lots of start-up information in the about section of my site, which i’m happy to explain in person, but it’s also available to anyone looking for information online, including past client testimonials. finally, if they’d like to meet up and get to know each other better, i can bring a portfolio with printed samples of my work.
and finally, driving the point home is this biznik article i found corroborating the lack of follow up that could use vast improvement: How to Get Clients: One Thing You Must Do to Turn Prospects Into Clients by Sue Clement
i have 2 for this week on the subject of social media and how to integrate it into your business. it seems that all the business organizations i belong to are having some sort of seminar on how to best use facebook, linkedin, twitter, etc., to their advantage. i’ve sat in on a few of these [mostly for the networking, as you can see in my blogroll, i’m already using online social networks regularly] and i’m seeing very similar reactions in every community. many small business owners are skeptical about conversion and the true value of investing time in these outlets, while others are mistakenly thinking the online communities are promising to do more for them than any really can. here are some good articles about how to use these sites and what you can expect from them.
Social Media: Strategy and Protecting Brand Identity by Michelle Bomberger
this article is a better introduction than many of the seminars i’ve attended, where they present the sites first, rather than introduce you to how you’ll be using them. when presented with technology first, many people put up a block and start to ask “why is this important to me,” when i think bomberger puts it best in saying “[online networking] relates to building relationships, just as one would in face-to-face networking scenarios.” that’s the key right there, it’s just an extension of the networking and promotion you’re already doing in person–you’re just catching different people in their preferred forum, with a consistent message across all platforms. enjoy!
It’s Not the Technology – It’s YOU, WITH the Technology by Christopher Burbridge
as a follow up, i think this article takes the emphasis off the technology and puts it back on you. with the flurry of these new networks coming on the scene, everyone is talking about them, and their importance in the grand scheme of a marketing plan is a bit conflated [which is okay for now, their current use is probably higher than it will level out to be]. while a strong presence online will certainly support your efforts, it is not the effort in itself. make sure all your marketing communications flow directly from you, the visionary, outward to all the channels that work best for you & your business.
The tone of your voice. (when you are talking) by Loren Weisman
this is a good article for anyone running their own business who is meeting people regularly. i am usually very comfortable talking to people, but i always have that moment of nerves before it’s my turn to introduce myself at an event or make contact with someone for the first time. weisman approaches the ins & outs of communication and how we relate to voice very clearly with good reminders of how you sound to others.
12 Steps To Your Personal Success by Joanne Victoria
here’s a bonus feel-good friday article about approaching life in the moment for more personal happiness, balance and success. it’s the simple things we already know that we often forget which allow us to get caught up in other things. take a minute to read through these and note when you’ve done some of them even this week [i’ll admit, i saw myself in a few].
have a great weekend!
i just signed up for the creative freelancer conference in san diego, august 26-28, presented by HOW and marketing mentor. i’ve been following marketing mentor for the last couple years and have found their advice for designers & creative professionals extremely valuable. also, while i love a good design conference, having an event that specifically focuses on running a creative business is perfect for people like me, and something other design events can only address peripherally.
aside from all the valuable info, i am looking forward to connecting with some of my favorite colleagues, hearing them present their topics of expertise, and meeting a lot of other indie pros. also of note, there are more networking events than are listed on the conference web site, including breakfast roundtables and networking happy hours you can sign up for once you register [i’m hoping to connect with my kernspiracy contingent at the welcome happy hour]. the early-bird deadline has been extended, and there are opportunities for all kinds of savings if you’re interested in going. and if you do sign up, let’s meet up & hang out!
parlato design studio 