Category — Selected by Jodi

A long time ago (the baby girl is now a teenager), I went to a friend’s baby shower. Her other friends got her lots of lacy dresses, a bassinet full of bows, plenty of frills all around.

I, on the other hand, got her something completely different. It was a sporty outfit from The Gap. I think it may have come with baby-sized sunglasses.

Why? Because I knew my “customer.” My friend just wasn’t a ruffles and lace kinda gal. She hated all those frills.

Her other friends got her what they liked. I got her something she would like.

It’s OK to do what you like if your audience is just like you (for example, you’re a geek marketing to other geeks). However, if you’re a geek marketing to lawyers, you’ll need to understand what lawyers want and need. You’ll have to learn to speak a bit of legalese, and watch your use of tech speak. You may be excited about new server software. The lawyer just wants to know that her network will stop crashing. Sell the software as a solution to the crashing, not as super-cool new software with redundant backups and offsite mirroring.

See the difference?

Develop a profile of your ideal customer. Know what they want, and give it to them. They’ll love you for it. They’ll stay longer too.

A-list blogger and successful social media consultant Chris Brogan posted a logo design project on 99Designs a few days ago. Then, he tweeted about it.

All hell broke loose.

If you don’t know, 99Designs is a design contest site. Businesses post a project, with a budget, and entrants submit work. If they win, they get paid. If not, they worked for free.

The small business reaction

Judging from the comments, small businesses love it. It’s cheap! It’s fast! There are lots of options! They think, “Hey I can get something that looks nice and I don’t need a second mortgage on my house!”

What designers think

Experienced designers hate it. It’s spec work! It devalues my art! It looks like crap! Would you ask 50 contractors to build a new den on spec?  Or trust your operation to an amateur brain surgeon?  What about the story of your company? Or how the colors and fonts express your philosophy?

They insist that you can’t just get a logo in one format. You need different versions for larger/smaller or print/web uses.

All true.

However, railing and ranting (while immediately satisfying) won’t change anything.

How to charge more for your work

If you want to get higher prices for your work, you need to better communicate and to better educate your clients:

• why you are worth
• who your market is (and isn’t)
• why buy from you
• what  you offer that cheap designers can’t (in business terms)

Specialize - pick a specific market (a niche, more on this coming later). Focus on them. Ignore everyone else.

Brand - use some of those branding skills on yourself. Are you the Ferrari of designers? Or the Smart Car? Why do people choose you? What do you bring to the job that other designers (or that cheap designers) don’t have? How are you remarkable?

Extra value – why knowing the difference between EPS and and RGB matters. And why one logo format doesn’t work for all media (web, trade show banners, brochures, faxes). A logo that looks OK online might look like a mud pie printed out in black and white.

Copyright /Due Diligence - a designer logo is the client’s alone – not ripped off from someone else’s site or work (legal fights are scary and expensive).

Skip the “I’m a professional, I have years of experience.” You are, and you do. That’s not what matters to the client. What matters to the client is whether you give her what she wants – to feel better, look better, earn more, be more successful.  What are you really selling?

Here’s the thing. Lamborghini doesn’t really sell cars. They sell status, luxury, sex appeal, and VROOOOM.

Hyundai sells cheap, reliable, and super guarantee.

Are you Lamborghini or Hyundai? Does Hyundai care about Lamborghini’s buyers? No. Nor vice versa. They ignore each other.

Show them why a real designer is worth it. And try to understand when they want to make the logo bigger!

Share your thoughts

What do you think about this debate?   Does cheap or spec  work hurt designers?  Does it matter what the “cheap” people do? What other ways can you approach the problem?

Image thanks to omniNate

Yogi Berra, Hall of Fame baseball catcher, is famous for saying things that seem silly at first. When you think about them for a while, they make a lot of sense. Here are some marketing lessons we can all learn from him.

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it”

Pick your path, don’t try to go down two roads at once. Find your niche, and your passion, and pursue it. Yogi is passionate about baseball, and has enough World Series championship rings for each finger on both hands. When you love what you do (and focus your energies on doing it), you will succeed.

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.”

Make a marketing plan, and follow it. For example, write an ebook to build an audience, have them sign up for your newsletter, and then eventually purchase other products or services.

“It gets late early out there”

The Web has sped everything up. Wait too long to respond to a customer complaint or a service problem and the twitterers will let you know. If you don’t post on your blog for three weeks, or answer comments, readers will go elsewhere.

“That place is so popular, nobody goes there anymore”

When you lose your focus, you’ll lose your customers too. Starbucks built an image and a “tribe” by brewing coffee that was different from ordinary deli coffee, offering more ways to customize it, and a welcoming atmosphere. Then, they expanded too much, tried to overcome it with discounts, and now… well there are more interesting places to get coffee in New York (with beans that have been roasted in the last 10 days, or coffee ground to order).

What do you think? Is Yogi right?  Am I?

Photo compliments of orlandk

No, not that word – I mean budget. Do your prospects give you odd looks when you mention it?

Sure, you’re only trying to find out what the right solution is. There’s no point recommending a Rolls Royce to someone in the market for a Hyundai.

The trouble is, that many prospects don’t see it that way. Especially if they’re small companies, they’re not used to buying marketing or design services.

They have no frame of reference. So, they wonder if you’re asking in order to squeeze as much cash out of them as possible.

Some ways to get around the problem:

Educate your clients

They know what houses, cars, and toasters cost, but not web sites or logos. Instead of pointing out your professionalism, or years of experience, talk to them in everyday language. Explain what you’re doing and why.

Discuss the effect that design changes will have on the amount of time and effort required to create a new web site. Be clear about what’s included in the estimate you give, and what will drive the price up. For instance, tell them that three design comps (choices) and two rounds of revisions are included. After that, it’s extra.

Be clear about the goals of the project and what’s included

Write up a creative brief (spelling out the market, the positioning, the intended audience, and the messages) and a project scope document – the assumptions behind the price, what the client will get, what you will do, a timeline, changes that could affect the price, etc.)

Create fixed cost products or services

A PC network tune-up (check for viruses, update software, run diagnostic software, optimize the machines). A new blogger package (get domain name, upload Wordpress theme, add 5 essential plugins, guide to how-to post/edit, upload photos). Spell out exactly what’s included, what the client gets, and how much it costs.

Use an “Olympic pricing” strategy

Michel Fortin recommends breaking your services down into three levels, with each one explained, so the client sees why the costs are different.

For instance, tweaking an existing landing page design would be bronze (lowest price).

Creating a completely new landing page, plus some general SEO suggestions, would be silver (higher price).

A new landing page, SEO ideas, and the order form, opt-in and thank you page is the gold level (highest price).

Got any experiences to share about asking for budgets? A lesson learned? Share them in the comments.

Image compliments of Randy son of Robert

In hardware, a linchpin holds a wheel onto an axle and keeps it from falling off.

In business, a linchpin is an indispensable person. Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin, is about those indispensable people. The book starts out slowly. At first, it’s much like Seth’s posts. Interesting, thoughtful, but not out-of-the-park remarkable (for him). Then, around p. 100, he kicks it into a whole new gear. I think it changed my life.

Be a linchpin

Someone who makes a difference. It doesn’t have to be the CEO. It could be the waiter who sings while he works, or the hotel clerk who runs out to buy toothpaste for a customer who had none (without being asked).

Beware the lizard brain

He talks about the lizard brain (which he defines as the primitive reflexes of fear, revenge, anger, and reproduction) that lurks in our heads, creating resistance. We struggle trying to fit in, be compliant, be acceptable. Don’t stick out or you’ll get hammered down.

All wrong.

Fight the resistance

You must stick out. Take risks. Be an “artist” — not necessarily in the drawing or singing sense (good thing, cause I can’t sing at all), but in the sense of nurturing, encouraging, and growing creativity.

It’s OK to fail

Give yourself permission to fail. It’s OK. Then, once you’ve failed, you can move on to the next thing. And the next.

Encourage your bad ideas. The worse the better! Do it often. The good ones will show up too.

I think it’s the best book he’s ever written. Go buy a copy. I’ll get milkshake money.

Image: wikipedia (public domain)