Self Advertising — professional secrets.
This situation is common to many design studios and small advertising agencies. A portfolio can be fantastic, the level of service excellent, but the client still doesn’t want to listen. What’s the matter? Very often the answer is absolutely simple, while the advertising agency is positioning itself as an expert, it is still unable to convince the client, because it neither has brand values nor a strong positioning. The agencies’ simply did not apply their knowledge on themselves –– there is no time, no motivation, and as a result their client doesn’t trust them. What to do to change the situation?
1. Give a clear task to yourself and brief yourself. Ask yourself some simple questions which will give you the answers what you offer to your clients. Something like this:
• Who am I?
• What am I doing and what are my values?
• What do I do and my competitors don’t?
• What do customers think about me after our first meeting? …and why do they think so?
• Who are my clients and how should I approach them?
2. Get answers to these simple questions and you will get a basic picture of the situation. Try to withdraw yourself from self brand creation and imagine that you work for some external client. Most often, your own branding may take 100 times longer than the usual. Why so? It is very difficult to stop. Professional designers can’t stop unless the result is perfect and they criticize themselves for every small detail. As a result we have chewed inarticulate branding, because at the end of the day, the designer got tired of himself.
• Withdraw yourself when you make or plan own corporate identity or branding. Convince yourself that you are working for the client and not for yourself.
• Start the projects with the pencil in hand and finish all the internal wars at the stage of the pencil, reach the computer with a ready idea.
• Do not try to be perfect, be practical and pragmatic, and that means do not spend eight times longer than conventional qualitative projects.
• Do not terrorize yourself, be a good customer for yourself.
You are also a brand like all other brands with which you work everyday. Think, what message your brand conveys to masses, what values and positioning it has.
• Create a capacious tag line of 2-3 words that reflect what you do (you can use it on your web site or business card, but most importantly you will be able to explain in a nutshell who you are).
• Create a detailed explanation of your tag line (several intensive sentences to maintain a conversation). This approach saves the time of you client and presents you in a favorable light.
• Check! Is your site doing well, is it interesting, are all links work well and more importantly, does it convey your ideas. Take opinions of a dozen people from your TA (some small research is always a good idea)
• Check! If your logo, website, corporate identity are in tune with a message that you want to convey to your clients.
In one word give time, respect and attention to your own brand.
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- Advertising technique – building a customer’s mood (shhh….silently)
- Advertising techniques for blogger. Chapter Five. 8 important steps before action.
- Advertising technique “You have problem – we have the solution”
- Brand or just another name? Or why internal communication as important as the outside one?
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