The case for quality

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

A former Wilmington University student of mine approached me with a problem. He didn’t feel as though he was getting the proper rates for his freelance work. He has found himself taking jobs that pay very little and reward him even less professionally. He wrote me asking for my advice.

This has been an issue with every freelancer in his/her career, and it also resonates with my small business clients. How do I get what I feel I am worth?

The simple answer is that you have to ask for it, be prepared to negotiate a little, and then move on if you don’t. But of course, there are some mitigating factors at hand:

The economy is still terrible for nearly everyone. Many businesses don’t feel as though they have the money to spend on design and strategy. My counter is that this isn’t a spend per se, but an investment. An investment in new customers and adding to their bottom line. Most small business owners don’t realize that when the market is sour, this is the very time to invest in marketing. While others are pulling back, your brand can be front and center and will reap the benefits of that exposure when things get better again.

There are so many free website plans out there. That’s a tough one. How can anyone compete with free or nearly free? Quality. Unless this particular client is a designer him/herself, chances are they will build a site that looks like it was built with a wizard. They don’t understand usability. They don’t get information architecture. They probably don’t know what their marketing strategy is or how to implement a multi-channel campaign. That’s where the service professional has an edge. Offer (and deliver) on  quality, backed my expertise and experience.

People don’t value what I do. That can be true, but give them an example that they can relate to. Ask them about their favorite commercial or website. Let them know that it is quite likely a team of people worked on that site to make it that great. Let them know that it takes a lot of know-how (know-how that they don’t have) to make advertising effective and worth the cost.

So here are some things that you can do to get the dollars you want:

Emphasize your talents/skills. Make sure that your skills are on display on your website or on your business card. Your site should be a showcase of your abilities. If your site is impressive, then it will be easier to get to “yes” from your prospective.

Sell your services as an investment, not an expense. Focus on the results of the design plan. Remind them that you’re there to help them make money/get new customers/build their brand. Make everything you do about THEM, not you.

Have a contract. Contracts let people know that you are a professional and not to be taken lightly. Here is a sample contract to get you started.

Have an elevator pitch. Something short, sweet and to the point. Make a declarative statement and then provide two – three reasons that make that statement true:

XYZ Design is a full-service, multi-channel design and strategy firm. We handle digital projects, mass media design and marketing strategy for business just like yours.We’ve won a couple of awards for our work, and while we’re proud of that, we focus on the results we get for our clients. Our strength is in integration. We make sure that your brand/message is consistent regardless of the medium.

It will make you sound more polished and ready to get down to business.

Be prepared to give. A little. No one wants to be stonewalled when negotiating price. Build in a little cushion in your price and then be prepared to hand that over as a carrot in the negotiation, if there is one.

Walk the walk. This not a license to be arrogant, but through your body language and the words that you choose, that you are helping them, not the other way around. You have the expertise, not them. You have the skills, not them. Remind yourself of that before you walk into the meeting.

Get more work under your belt. I gave away sites for a long time, and still will barter services if there is a new technology/technique that I’d like to try. The more you do, the better you become at it. You’ll be able to go through your mental library and bring up a project that is similar to the one that you’re proposing. Just like surgery, you want the guy who’s done this many times before.

Get testimonials. Sure, you can say all the right things, but clients like to hear from other clients about your services. Have testimonials on your site. They do go a long way.

Get referrals. My business runs on referrals. Once you have a client that is happy with your work, create incentives for them to refer you to others. Offer them a free layout of a new flyer or business card if they bring you a customer that signs a contract. You can actually charge the new person a little more because you already have the leverage of enhanced reputation and a recommendation from a person that they trust.

While I am addressing this mainly to creatives, small business clients that are looking for their services would be well-advised to look for these characteristics when selecting a provider.

Posted in Brand Development, Business Development, Client Relations, Marketing Techniques, Updates and Snippets | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

courtin’ and marryin’: thoughts on customer relationship management strategy

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

So as I am developing email marketing templates for a client, I thought it would be a good time to drop a post about customer relationship management or CRM. Many big brands pay very close attention to their relationships and are always looking for ways to strengthen them. I have found that many small businesses simply don’t think in those terms.

I ask a prospective client about his/her goals, and they invariably say something along the lines of “increase sales” or “get more customers”, but many small businesses don’t have a clue about how to keep the customers that they have or improve the relationship that they have with them in order to make them more than one shot deals, or, better yet, get valuable referrals from them.

It’s a known fact that it’s cheaper to keep a customer than it is to get a new one, a fact that is lost on many small business owners.

The Customer Relationship Life Cycle

Essentially, the Customer Relationship Life Cycle works like this; every customer goes through these stages of engagement with your brand:

  • Awareness
  • Engagement or Exploration
  • Familiarity
  • Commitment
  • Separation

Each of those stages is an event and requires event marketing. This is not to be confused with a Back To School sale or a newspaper ad for Mother’s Day. This is about the events on the Customer Life Cycle.

The basic idea is to keep your customers in the Engagement/Commitment phases as long as possible. It used to be a time where people became loyal to a brand because that brand was what they grew up with or was the only game in town. Not so any more. There is competition from all over the globe to provide the kinds of good and services that you do.

So you have to have a plan. Here are some key concepts to remember:

Acknowledge Engagement

Small businesses need to have a strategy to deliver a message to each customer when they reach a certain engagement milestone on the Customer Life Cycle. What do you tell a person when they make their first purchase? Their tenth? Their fiftieth? Or if they haven’t made a purchase in a very long time? Each of those events is an opportunity to deliver a customized message to that particular customer that a) acknowledges the event, b) thanks/rewards them for the behavior that led to that event and c) creates an incentive to continue said behavior. Keep doing this and that customer will advance onto the next stage of the Customer Life Cycle.

Create Customer Evangelists

So when you have rewarded a customer to the point that they are in the Commitment stage of the Customer Life Cycle, something wonderful happens. They start telling their social network (friend, family, coworkers, Facebook, Twitter) about the wonderful relationship that they have with your brand. Think I’m kidding? Stand in a group of men and tell them that you are looking for a mechanic. You know the response that you’ll get. Each of them will tell you that “their guy” split the atom.

Now you have a “sales force” working for you, bringing you even more business.

Develop a Multi-Channel CRM Strategy

Sit with your creative/marketing people (insert shameless pitch for M19 MEDIA here) and devise a plan to communicate with your customer base on a regular basis. Email is the cheapest way to do so, but don’t forget the other channels, like direct response mail. If you have a storefront, you can use postcards to bring them in. Likewise with lo-so media, like Foursquare. Create incentives for repeated check-ins or purchases. Or, if your base is small enough, call them! Whatever you do, communicate your gratitude and you’ll keep those customers for life.

 

 

Posted in Brand Development, Business Development, Getting Social, Marketing Techniques, Updates and Snippets | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Conversion rate coolness

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I have been working on building a brand and sales for a client, Cal Smith, who not only is a great client, he is just a fun guy, period. I have been working with him very closely and educating him on how marketing works, especially in the social media sphere.

Now we have been working with some pretty traditional stuff but giving it a whole new twist with Facebook’s ability to mircotarget audiences and drill down to that set of people that will really respond to the marketing message. But now that we have the audience and they are ready to follow the call to action, what do we do with them then?

As I mentioned in the last post, we’re looking for conversions. And in this scenario, the conversion occurs when the user clicks to read an excerpt from Cal’s book. The hope is that the reader will then continue down the funnel and choose to purchase a book. When I started tracking the conversion rates, the numbers were fairly low. We needed a way to get people to perform the call to action.

Enter design and usability!

One of the things that I noticed first was that when users got to the landing page, that they were going straight for the top-level navigation. Under normal circumstances, that would be a good thing, but I wanted them to click a button further down the page. The client didn’t have the budget to build a dedicated landing page, so a page within the site would have to be modified.

Here is the landing page:

One little design element can make all the difference!

You’ve seen this before in my last post. What is new from the other version is the large badge in the bottom right corner of the first read image.

Chances are, the user will be attracted to the image first. Remembering the lessons in usablity from the web, I placed the badge in the lower right corner, where people tend to look for calls to action. The badge tell them “Right here! This is what you’re looking for!”

So far, conversions are up nearly 50% from a 14.29% goal completion rate just last week to a 24.19% goal completion rate today. Just from one little badge.

Sales are up, too. The numbers are still small, yes, but there was a whopping 850% increase in sales from the week before the change to the week after. Can’t argue with those facts. I’ll keep monitoring the stats and report back.

So when you are looking for a creative provider, make sure that they understand those tenets of usability, task-oriented design and the analytic that drive strategic creative decisions.

Posted in Business Development, Getting Social, Marketing Techniques, Updates and Snippets, User Experience Design | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

adventures in facebook microtargeting pt.2 (UPDATE)

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

So the Facebook microtargeting campaign has been going on for a couple of weeks now and I have to say that it is a resounding success. The CTRs are hovering around .25% (I know, right?) and my client is paying an average of $.50 per click.

So let me give you a little more background: The user is presented with a Facebook ad that directs them to a landing page within the site. It is not a dedicated landing page per se, it is a page within the site that is germane to the ask in the ad. The user is instructed to read an excerpt from the author’s latest book. When a user clicks on the excerpt link, then we consider that a conversion goal achieved.

Landing Page for Facebook ads

This is a landing page screenshot for Cal’s Facebook ad campaign. In an effort to boost conversion rates, I added the badge on the first read. So far the numbers have gotten a small boost, running at about 11 15% since implementation. Actual landing page.

Conversion rates have been running from 0% on some days to over 20% on others, coming in at around 11 15% on most days. The research that I have done has indicated that I might be in the right range, although this is not quite a sales pitch nor is it an opt in. What I have noticed is that users are exploring the rest of the site which is good for brand engagement.

Email marketing opt-ins are coming in steadily at 1 per day, so a nice little audience is building which will make future marketing efforts that much easier.

More to come!

Posted in Brand Development, Getting Social, Marketing Techniques, Projects, Updates and Snippets | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

Location marketing on location (Me gusta “lo-sos”)

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

One of my favorite neighborhood restaurants is taking advantage of location marketing. For those of you that don’t know, location marketing takes advantage of smart phones equipped with GPS.

On location-based social sites, also known as “lo-so”s, like Facebook, Yelp! and Loopt, a user can “check in” to establishments near him/her and the savvy business creates incentives/rewards for doing so.

Tijuana Taco Shop is offering 50% off your meal for liking them, thereby creating a fan base that will advocate their brand, and 10% off your meal every time you check in, creating incentives and a pathway for deeper brand engagement.

Brand advocacy is then handled by the user who will transmit Tijuana Taco Shop’s message through their social network of friends, just like I did to my social network.

The beauty of this is that there is a non-existent barrier to entry and the initial cost of acquisition will more than pay for itself over time. The initial offer is presented on site to maintain control of traffic and therefore costs. Muy inteligente!

I’ve attached a photo.

20110809-030223.jpg

Posted in Discoveries, Getting Social, Marketing Techniques | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Facebook microtargeting

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

One of the goals of marketers is to create a message that the viewer believes is meant solely for him/her. Considerable time, money and effort is spent developing the right message for the right audience.

The smaller the audience, the more specific and compelling the marketing message can be. The practice of delivering messages to very small audiences is called microtargeting.

As a marketer that serves small businesses, I rely on Facebook’s ability to make microtargeting easier. I am currently working on a second round of Facebook ads for my client, author Cal Smith. With some research, we were able to microtarget based on similar authors.

Originally, we lumped all of those people together and delivered a fairly generic message. The ads performed fairly well, around .028% CTR. But the cost per click began to rise steadily and conversions are very low. So once that campaign ran its course, we looked at new ways to reach that market.

We broke the larger group into smaller groups, groups that centered on one author, not all of them. We selected the three authors that are most similar in style to Cal and created targeted messages that let the reader know why they were seeing that message.

So far, the ads are performing splendidly. CPC is extremely low and the CTR is close to .16%! I’m sure that it will level off, but so far, Cal and I are pleased.

Check back for updates!

Posted in Getting Social, Marketing Techniques, Projects | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Branded QR Codes in action

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

While they might not be a new phenomenon as digital phenomena go, QR codes are certainly making an impact with small business. Jim Israel’s Conjure Consulting, a client of mine, is using QR codes to great effect.

We created a generic branded QR code that will take the mobile user to a special landing directory that can be changed up whenever the client chooses. So if he’s running an acquisition special, let’s say, that landing page can serve up the content without having to create a new QR code for that special occurrence.

Tracking will be easy too, as the landing page can then redirect to  a sub-page. Not only does this aid in deep-link tracking, say to prevent someone from stumbling onto the page accidentally, but content can be recycled just by changing the re-direct. Fun!

Here is the working (test) QR code:

Branded QR code. Set the Error Correction Capability (ECC) to high (30%) and a branded element can be added without loss of functionality. Please note that this is the test QR code.

 

 

Posted in Discoveries, Getting Social, Marketing Techniques, Projects, Updates and Snippets | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Groupon for the creatives

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

So, normally, this blog is aimed at the small business owner looking for marketing advice and enough design skill to make good choices when engaging a design professional. This post is not for you. This is for my brothers and sisters in the creative field.

If you’ve hung your own shingle or part of a small firm, you know how limited resources are for the latest and greatest gadgets, programs and literature. I was recently at my local Borders picking over the carcass, and damn! Design book are EXPENSIVE.

Not that the authors don’t deserve it, they do. But sometimes, I can’t drop $200 on books every time something changes in digital design.

Enter AppSumo. AppSumo is a Groupon for digital designers. Once you sign up, they send you emails (about 2x/week) about all sorts of deals that they have going on. Books, training, software, you name it. And it’s usually up to half off.

One reason I like it is that they provide most of their deals on digitally delivered products. Seems to me that the producer of the content, since it is digital, is not taking the bath that the restaurant owner or bike shop proprietor would be for hard goods.

I just bought a book from SitePoint (LOVE those guys) explaining the principles of good web design that I intend to share with my class. The price of the book at Borders was $39.99. I got a digital copy for $19. A searchable digital copy that I can have forever and it takes up no room in my tiny office.

Anyway, this is a good use of the Groupon model, it seems like no one is getting hurt in the deal. So check them out and let me know what you think of the site and the deals contained within.

Posted in Discoveries, Projects, Updates and Snippets | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

image vs. icon pt.2

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

Starting up a new Facebook campaign for an author client of mine. Going to go for round two of the image vs. icon theory that I have developed for Facebook ads.

If you missed my first posting, I hypothesized that icons may do better in attracting attention and boosting CTRs than a traditional image due to image fatigue on Facebook.

So here is the setup:

3 sets of A/B ads, one with an icon, the other with an image. The copy will change slightly between them, but the general tone will be the same. One set will be a national campaign to generate fans for the client’s person page, the other two will be limited to geographic locations, in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic region. I’ll be reporting on each of the ad’s performance and the loser after 10 days will be dropped. Stay tuned for the numbers!

UPDATE:

Creative Face-off (A/B testing results):

The ads are performing remarkably well, and of course, the results are inconclusive about what is drawing more attention. A well-shot (thanks) photo of the author for the fan page is going like gangbusters and beat out a graphic of the book.

A graphic of a skull rising in the Carribean beat out a picture of a nuclear explosion for the ad meant to get people to the main brand site to buy books.

Change in strategy:

Originally, the book ads were concentrated in geographic locations known for sailing. We targeted the area around Providence, RI and Annapolis, MD. While the ads performed fairly well, we noticed a high bounce rate on the landing page.  We’re pretty sure that the landing page is not the problem, since there is only two CTAs on the page. We traded demographic segmentation for behavioral segmentation.

We re-aligned the ad to the same population as the fan acquisition ad and so far, CTR is improved and visitors are responding better to the CTAs on the landing page. Hopefully those hits will turn into sales, but there, only time will tell. Stay tuned!

Posted in Getting Social, Marketing Techniques, Projects, Updates and Snippets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Help me help you

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Franklin Parrish

I had a fascinating kick-off conversation with a new client today, Jim Israel formerly of Culinary Concepts in Philadelphia, PA. He is starting a new consulting company aimed at the hospitality industry. Usually, my clients struggle with their identities, their mission and their unique selling points. Jim had all of that in spades. I was actually a little embarrassed that I had started him with the basic brand development questions.

Jim was on point and had the following questions answered fully:

  • Who are you?
  • Why should I listen to what you have to say?
  • What can you do for me?
  • Do you have the expertise to back up your claims?
  • What can I expect when working with you?

Many companies can’t answer those questions right off the bat and it’s up to the creative strategists like me to help them discover those answers and figure out ways to deliver that message to their intended audience.

It’s a lesson for creatives and small business owners alike that getting to the heart of the “why” is crucial to the success of any brand, advertising or marketing project. When a client comes to the table with those questions already answered in a clear, compelling way, then they are truly helping me help them.

Look for more info about this client coming soon!

Posted in Brand Development, Client Relations, Projects | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off