Speaking at AIGA OC Juice: Successful Self Promotion 06/11/09

Attract, Connect, and Motivate Action

Creative Juice is a series of monthly roundtable breakfast conversations for principals of creative firms. This is an exclusive forum to get together to learn and discover new strategies for maximizing your business. Meetings are not lectures but open discussions. Roundtables are small groups of 15-17.

Join us this month for an informative talk with creative agency expert, Joven Orozco, on how to build your brand & boost your business through effective self promotion. A timely discussion about what it takes to stay alive –and thrive– in these challenging times.

Learn from the best on how to position, plan, implement, and measure, your marketing efforts. Also discussed will be how to integrate new tools, like blogs and social media, to find new business prospects, generate leads, and stay-top-of-mind with your existing customers.

Register now and secure your spot!
All are Welcome - Open to members & non-members.
http://www.orangecounty.aiga.org/2009/05/17/juice/

Comment below if there's anything you want me to touch on.

CLIENT BALANCE: Sharks can kill your firm

A friend of mine went from a 12 person firm to three when he lost his biggest client that made up 75% of his annual revenue. It took him over 2 years to recover and get back on track. This is an isolated example of how poor client balance can ruin a design firm. Although not as extreme this is a fairly common problem with many creative service firms. Your client can grow fairly quickly in a short amount of time. You must monitor the amount of work that comes in and measure against your revenue goals. I have written how to classify your current & future clients and provide a guide you can use to monitor your firm's growth.

I've created a guide that allows a design firm to classify a client by the amount of estimated annual revenue the client can provide to the firm. We're going to show what a dangerous client, an ideal client, and a promising client looks like and assign percentages to them.

A dangerous client will be identified as a “Shark”. Sharks provides large amounts of revenue and if for any reason the Shark goes away your company's cash flow can seriously get eaten up by overhead costs. Anything over 25% will be labeled as a Shark. If you work with different divisions of a company the aggregate should still be under 25%.

If a Big Fish becomes a Shark there are several ways to handle the situation. You can increase your sales on other Big Fish, bump up a Guppy or tell the Shark you will have to pass on the project.

An ideal client will be identified as a “Big Fish”. This is your money making client. Every month you should monitor these Big Fish to ensure they don't turn into a Shark. Ideally you want to keep their revenue total to 20% of annual revenue.

Promising big fish clients will be labeled as “Guppies”. These guys are important for they can eventually step up and become a Big Fish when you're ready for them. These fish are usually 10% of annual revenue.

Everyone else we'll call “Bottom Feeders”. This percentage should never exceed 10% of annual revenues. These clients tend to have “champagne tastes with a beer budget”. The only reason you should be working with these clients is for strategic reasons. These Bottom Feeders should have the potential to lead to big profitable work. These should not be friend, family or cross my fingers type of clients that you already know in your heart will lead to another project of the same size or even worse nothing. Please use your best judgment.

So what is the best client balance? Most of your revenue will come from your Big Fish. Typically you want three or four Big Fish and have a couple of Guppies ready for when the Big Fish go. This is a great tool when interviewing new clients. You can quickly identity where you can place your new client or where you have room for them. I suggest to always start slow and place them with the guppies before you hire any new employees or fire any existing clients. Do not accept work unless you know you will be profitable and can service them to the best of your firm's ability.

How is it done? I've used this system for many years and want to share with you what has been successful with my design firm. First you start with your estimated annual revenue goal and multiply by 20%. For example $500,000 x 20% = $100,000. Each of your Big Fish should bring in that much revenue. Everyone else is either a Guppy or Bottom Feeder based on your estimate for revenue from that client. Please review the schematic posted with this blog.

You may not have the three or four Big Fish at this time and you'll need to work at it. This is simply a guide to grow your firm and service your revenue stream versus hoping a bowl full of Guppies and Bottom Feeders will turn into Big Fish.

Happy fishing.

Social Media Strategy for Business Recap

Morgan Witt, strategic marketing and communications consultant from NovoLOGIQ, provided an overview of social media, the various platforms, how to integrate with your marketing mix, what to readers want and best practices for businesses.

Benefits of social marketing for your company:
Customer Communication, Customer Service, Brand Monitoring, Promotions
SEO (search engine optimization), Lead Generation, Sales, Build and influence opinions Develop relationships, improve organic search, cross promotion, PR to name a few.

Social Network Platforms:
Blogging Websites (on or off domain)
- http://www.blogger.com
- http://www.wordpress.com
- Many others

Social Websites (platforms most known)
- http://www.myspace.com/
o Younger demographic
o Flexible design (html based)
o Blog
o Content is easily shared
o Great platform for user generated content
- http://www.facebook.com
o Evolving to a better business networking tool
o The demographics are getting older
o Tons of profile data to leverage for behavioral targeting
o Web applications
- http://www.linkedin.com
o Groups
o Q&A
o Status updates
o In mail
o Networking community

Micro-Blogging Websites (happy medium between texting and blogging)
- http://www.twitter.com
o 140 character updates
o Happy medium from texting and blogging
o It’s rich and in real time
o Customer feedback data
o A monitoring tool
o Customer service tool
o One-one marketing channel

Photo Sharing Websites
- http://www.flickr.com
o User generated content
o Tagging
o Groups
o Community

Video Sharing Websites
- http://www.youtube.com
o User generated content
o Channels
o Tagging
o Subscriptions
o Community
o You can have a branded page
- http://www.12seconds.tv
o 12 second updates

Wikis (Lightweight web application that can be embedded on a website, blog, forum, etc. or downloaded onto a desktop and embed.)
- Clever social applications/widgets can become extremely viral

Best practices for social marketing:
Community Management is Key
Create a unique experience
Respond to comments
Tap into the reasons why friends share
Provoke thought and conversations
Cross promote your presence on other platforms
Promote social media through email newsletters
Promote email sign up through blogs
Set up blog up to twitter feed
Promote press releases through blog
Write to be helpful
Linking and Tagging
Keyword focus
Add RSS feed (feed reader)
Add a blog roll
Integrate social book marking tools
Add email newsletter sign up box
Post videos
Keep brand consistent
Point out interesting things about your company and space
Promote clearance sales
Share the human side of your company
Tell a story
Humanize your organization
Cross promote
Think outside the box

Early Adaptors:
Comcast, Jet Blue and Southwest Airlines – speaks directly with customers
Zappos.com – President uses social media well – telecasts when celebs are at the facility
First person to answer this question gets a pair of shoes…
Dell – Created a 40-50 person team devoted to social marketing
Starbucks built a social network to give and get feedback. Share / Vote / Discuss / See
Threadless.com - promotes, brands consistence, shows new product
Busted tees uses a social application where referrers got paid
Blendtec – uses a viral video “will it blend?” to increase sales by 300%
UPS - Creates widget that served a purpose and are useful to customers
- PC/Mac compatible
- Created and integrated marketing campaign
- Extension of the brand

ROI
Unique visitors
Page views
Time spent
Volume of contacts
Sharing
Video/Photo views
Number of comments
Downloads
Transactions
Number of followers and comments

Revenue

What do you want to think about?
Platform
Design
Features and flexibility
Social Book marking (delicious and sharing)
Content
RSS
Comments
Ask if these are actionable.
Understand that criticism of your brand is not bad
Gain understanding of the tools

My take on social marketing
Networking all platforms together to cross promote each medium thus having a cohesive message and brand. Whether you use myspace, linkedin, twitter, youtube or all of them you have to understand content is king, be compelling, tell a story and be human. Being funny also helps.

Simple Marketing Plan Guidelines for Designers and Service Folks

Friends, classmates, and peers regularly ask how I acquire my clients.  I've developed a loose marketing guideline that has worked for me.  Below is a working document to start with... this is constantly evolving.  I appreciate any feedback and ask that you share your thoughts and/or suggestions. 

Marketing is a management process that focuses on strategy, processes, positioning and tactile elements of a product or service. The marketing guideline allows me to stay focused on whom to contact and how often, recognize opportunities and measure results. 

1. Determine Budget

Average spending is usually 5-10% of gross revenues
• ie. Revenue: $500,000 = $25K to $50K budget/ year

2. Determine Position

Are you specialized in a vertical or horizontal market?
• Vertical: by industry (only action sports industry)
• Horizontal: by skill set (only corporate identity design)

3. Determine Target
Pre-qualify your leads with the following questions
• Do they outsource?
• What type of projects?
• How much do they spend per season or year?
• How soon do they expect a need for your services?

Joven's Taboos (Try to avoid clients that are...)
• Spending their own money
• Smaller than your company
• Not in your industry or skill set
• Have no outsourcing experience
• Doesn't understand your company must profit

4. Determine Fit
Where are they in the buying stage?

Star System (determine how often to touch base and how much to spend)
• 3 star: Aware of you & have a need LESS THAN 6 months
– Touch base at least every other month or more frequent
– Receives the more elaborate promotions
• 2 star: Aware of you & have a need MORE THAN 6 months
– Touch base at least every quarter
– Receives the less expensive promotions
• 1 star: Unaware of you
– Touch base once a year

– Receives the less expensive promotions

5. Determine Vehicles
There are core vehicles essential to market your company
• Cold/warm calls:  most successful (plan 1 day a week to call)
• Networking:  cheap and effective
• Corporate Brochure:  discuss process, customer service (doubles as a sales tool)
• Website:  determine if site is a closer (used to confirm the sale) or opener (used to open the conversation). Keep it simple.
• Mailers:  (Promotion or E-Newsletter)
– Promotional (postcard, poster, mailer, etc.) Remember to budget printing & postage
– E-Newsletter: content is king, be compelling, do it right, and don't get on spam list
• Press Releases:  cheap, great exposure and helps with natural search
• Add others:  events, speaking gigs, networking, contests, etc.

6. Determine Monthly Budget
Take budget and spread throughout calendar year
• You should be touching base with your leads every month or so

– $25K = est. $2K/month
– $50K = est. $4/K/month

7. Determine Plan of Action with Calendar 

See Example:  spaces have been filled with goals or what's slated for that month (ie. goal: send 40 books) 

 – Your Plan will be customized to your own goals and promotions

 – Create a separate blank calendar and write in what happened at the end of each month

 – Remember to consider everything like postage, networking fees, etc.

– Remember you don't have to touch base with 2 & 1 stars that often 

– Spend more some months on a promo and send to ONLY 3 Stars

It generally averages a few years to land a large client.  The main goal of the marketing guideline is to stay consistent and branded so you stay “top of mind” with your potential clients and existing clients.   

Again, I appreciate any suggestions and/or feedback on the marketing guideline.  Other topics I'm working on is the freelancers’ transition to a firm, client base management and proposals.  Please advise if you want me to write on other topics.

Things Designers Don't Tell Other Designers

My name is Joven, Prinicpal & Creative Director for Joven Orozco Design. Over the last 13 years I've developed some strategies for managing and growing a design business. I had the opportunity to speak on some closing techniques for AIGA/OC. Now I'm considering putting some things together so I can share with my peers. Please let me know what you'd be interested in learning from my trials and errors.