Archive for marketing

Business Card Marketing 101

{ November 26, 2007 @ 7:28 pm } · { design, marketing }
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What’s the first piece of collateral material that most businesses get? Their business card of course. But how much thought goes into it?

Your business card is sometimes the very first impression that a client gets of you. You may mail them one, or leave one with a secretary as you try and get an appointment with them. Or, if you’ve made personal contact at a gathering, its the last impression you leave them with as you reach into your jacket pocket, purse or wallet and deposit a card in their hand.

What does your card say about you? Does it reflect your business? Does it stand out or does it deserve to be filed in their circular filing cabinet, also known as the trash can?

When designing a business card there are certain key elements to keep in mind.

  1. Follow the brand of your business. It does no good to establish a brand and not incorporate that into every element of  your collateral material. And if you haven’t established a brand, your business card design is the perfect time to start.
  2. Make sure that the card is legible. Too often people try and put too much information on their business card rendering it practically impossible for the average person to read. Don’t make phone numbers, email addresses, website URL and such too small just to fit them on. They are your lifeline with the client. They need to be able to read them.
  3. That brings us to the old adage, “Less is more”. You’re not trying to give them your whole marketing plan at once. You’re trying to either make them call you or call you back.  Think of your business card as your ‘elevator speech’ in print form. (What’s an elevator speech? If you had 30 seconds with someone in an elevator what would you tell them about your business?)
  4. Does your business card say what your business is? You’d be amazed at how many times that element is left off. A lot of times a business name doesn’t say indicate what the business is. If that’s the case, does your tag line? And if you don’t use a tag line make sure you use some line that says what you do, such as “We fix your credit” or “Plumbing services”.
  5. Avoid humor with your card unless it will really appeal to your target audience. Think about the situations you’ll hand out your card to people. If you’d be embarrassed to hand it to your grandmother then maybe you don’t want to put it on your card. Or, if you really feel the need, get two cards made and only hand the humorous card to those you know will appreciate it. That can be dangerous, however, as you never know who THEY will give it to!
  6. Does the design style of your card reflect your business and who you are? A fun, whimsical card is great and can be really appropriate but not necessarily in a corporate setting. A very corporate card can be wrong if you’re trying to appeal to teen shoppers. Its all about who you are and who you are marketing too.
  7. Are you using both sides of your card? The back side of your card can be an excellent place to do more in-depth marketing, such as showing a list of services available or products you are marketing. It costs justa little more to add content to that side but it can be well worth it.
  8. Print quality. What’s yours like? With so many desktop publishing programs available to the general public, as well as products for printing business cards on, a lot of people feel its ok to just run one off of their home printer. And in a pinch, that can be a great idea. Nothing worse than running out of cards when you really need one. But just like anything else, quality printing speaks volumes about your business. A nice thick, high quality card stock along with professional printing won’t really cost that much in the long run. We know of one company that offers an exceptional deal – 1,000 full colour, UV coated, two-sided business cards – printing and design for only $125.00 (Business Card Special)
  9. Another question to ask yourself is how you are going to use your business card. If you’re going to want to write on one side then you should not get the reverse side UV coated. That will enable you to safely write with pen without it smudging but by UV coating the front you’ll protect the card as well as present a well-polished image.
  10. Be sure to include all of your contact numbers as well as your email address and website URL on your card. You don’t want to have to hand print those things in later as it will be both time consuming and detract from the professional appearance that you’re working so hard to project.

Its well worth it to hire a design professional to create your business card.  A good design professional will be able to offer pointers and ideas to you through the entire design process. And as we’ve stated before, your business card can be your first impression. Let them help you get off on the right foot and on your way to success!

If You Build It They Will Come

{ November 17, 2007 @ 6:08 pm } · { Technology, design, marketing }
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Its true of course, isn’t it? All you have to do is build your website and put it on the world wide web and like magic visitors will flock to your business and you’ll be rich beyond your wildest dreams. While its true that getting your website on the internet is an important first step in success on the world wide web, its a bit more complicated than that.

So, what things do you need to know to achieve a high search engine placement on the internet?

  • Search engines use “spiders” and “robots” to go out and scour the internet for websites. These spiders and robots report back what they find to the search engines will all of that information dumped into a giant database. Different search engines have different criteria for search engine placement.

  • Building your website with good solid HTML code will assist those tiny search engine spiders and robots in their job. If they can easily read your site’s code thats another hurdle that you’ve cleared. A good web designer will know the things that throw up a read flag to these information scavengers and will build your website to avoid these pitfalls

  • By now you’re probably asking yourself what part actual content plays in this process. And that’s where we come to relevance. So, what’s relevance got to do with it? Well, those same little spiders and robots will read the actual words on your site devouring all of that information to pass back along to the database tracking their websites.

  • if you want to be found under a search for fashion photographers in the Southern California area, its important to have those words in your text. The spiders are matching the meta tags, which are tags built in to the code telling them what your site is about, with the actual text on your page. If they don’t find those same words, well, that affects your placement on that particular search as those sites with the most relevant page content will come up at the top of the the search.

Ok, so I’ve taken all of those things into consideration but my site still doesn’t come up at the top of the search. AND I’m getting emails now telling me that certain companies guarantee a top 10 placement, so why can’t you do that for me too?

Its simple. Nobody can guarantee that. There are options for paying some search engines to be placed on the top of their list. That is a very expensive option. And even if one of the companies promoting that they will get you a number one placement is lucky enough to have that happen, you’ll quickly see yourself slide down on the list

There are a lot of people who want number one, maintaining that status without paying for it is next to impossible. There are other “tricks of the trade” that we can employ, but they are outside the cost of basic website development.

If you really want to see your site grow, there is something simple you can do yourself. Put your URL on every piece of marketing material you produce. Put it in your email signature on your emails, put it in the signature block on your regular correspondence and most certainly be sure that its on your business cards. These things don’t cost you anything but the rewards are great!

If you would like to download a .pdf version of “If You Build It They Will Come” you can get that at:

The Marriage of Marketing + Design = Success

{ November 15, 2007 @ 7:14 pm } · { design, marketing }
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There are a lot of good graphic and web designers working today in the marketplace. You might even know one or two of them. But what makes a good designer great?

That takes a special breed of designer! 

And it requires the marriage of marketing and design. A great design professional will incorporate the best marketing techniques available. They know what works – they see it every day. And they probably collect examples of great marketing collateral that they have seen for reference.

An effective marketing design professional will emerse themselves into your business. They may not know pest control when they land the assignment but they will understand it before begin the actual design process.

Being a marketing design professional takes a lot of hard work and dedication. If you’re shopping for one be sure to ask a few simple questions:

  • Can I see your portfolio. Do they do the same thing all the time? Does it look the same? (You can view my portfolio at www.debrongraphics.com and www.debbyjohnson.com)
  • What collateral material will they do for you? If you go to them saying I need a tri-fold brochure do they ask questions? Do they want to know what you’re going to do with it and how you’re going to use it?
  • Do they suggest alternatives or additional concepts to consider? Now, I don’t mean are they upselling you like a car salesman – no offense to car salesmen – but are they thinking ahead from a business sense.  When I build a website for someone I almost always “qualify” my price by telling them that I stand by my price as given. I may suggest additional elements and/or pages to incorporate but that is not to add to my price. Its because I recognize that they need it to succeed. I’m all about their success!
  • Do they have a good track record? What kinds of projects have they worked on? Are they used to working on large projects or do they focus more on smaller projects? I know that I love working the full spectrum. I’ve done plenty of small “mom and pop” projects, start-up companies, which are really fulfilling to watch succeed and commercial projects with values up to $129 million dollars. (Honestly, that’s almost too many zeros for most of us to comprehend!)
  • Are they excited about your project? Do they ask intelligent questions. Are they engaged? If they aren’t engaged now they probably never will be once the actual rolling up the sleeves, down and dirty work begins.
  • Do they understand marketing? You don’t want someone who spouts concepts but has never used them. Do they know what they are doing?
  • Do they tell you to cross market and give you ideas about how to do that? Anyone who tells you that you only need to market one way doesn’t know marketing. And if you meet a web designer who tells you “If you build it they will come” RUN as fast as you can in the opposite direction. There’s a lot more to a success website than just building it.
  • Do they know how to incorporate, or marry, successful design with marketing expertise? Again, look at their portfolio and really analyze their work. (You can view my portfolio at www.debrongraphics.com and www.debbyjohnson.com) Do they show cross-marketing there? Does the design make sense from a marketing standpoint or is just meant to look good? Does it deliver a message? Is the message received? And what’s your call to action? If you can’t see all of that then its not working.

Taking it up a notch and combining all of these elements is what GREAT marketing design is all about.