Too many clients are wasting their precious design budgets by not starting the design process correctly.

The first and most vital step in the design process is to produce a well thought out brief and give it to your designer at the beginning of a project. Doing this will produce a win-win result for both client and designer, as clear guidelines are in place before a project commences.

Just as a builder needs architectural plans to build a house, a creative designer requires an informative brief to produce an effective visual solution.

 What is a Creative Brief?

A creative brief is a written plan of the objectives, outcomes and influences that shape a design. A creative brief is not a list of instructions, nor is it a checklist for designers. A creative brief is a well-mapped document, supplied by the client to the designer.

 What things should a client consider when putting together a brief for their creative designer?

Things to include:

1. Job description – Clearly state what you actually want the creative designer to produce for you.
2. Target audience – It is important to do some market research before starting the design process. An effective, advertising campaign cannot be produced without knowledge of the target audience.
3. What are your objectives? What is the desired response of your campaign? ?What’s the call to action, e.g. do you want the client to call you, enquire online etc.)
4. What is your goal?
5. Are there any influencing factors that need to be considered? E.g. a particular colour that needs to be used, style guides that must be adhered to.
6. Is there any artwork to be supplied for inclusion?
7. Discuss a practical timeframe

So basically with a little time spent initially before you approach a designer, can help save you money in the long run.

You don’t need to have marketing degree or have completed a marketing analysis before any design job, it doesn’t need to be that in depth. Just some basic information, a bit of brain storming about what you want the particular design project to achieve, explained in your words, can end up saving you lots of time, money and distress at the time of production.

Save time - business owners are time poor, so spending time initially with save you an enormous amount of time during the proofing process - who wants to waste time going thru 15 sets of changes because the designer isn’t getting the message across because you didn’t explain it thoroughly in the first place

Save Money - if a thorough brief is given, then as the client you will very quickly be able to see if the designer you have chosen is capable and talented enough to actually produce an effective design solution for you.

A talented, professional graphic designer will:

1)     ask you to write a brief for them or go through a series of questions that will establish the guidelines for the brief before the job starts

2)   be able to produce a viable solution or range of possible solutions within the first round of proofs.

Contact Tanzie on:

m 0414 611 851  .  creative@kaleidoscopedesign.com.au  .  kaleidoscopedesignmanagement.com.au

You may also interested in:

1. Weekly Marketing Tips: Design, Surveys, Local Newspaper
2. 5 Cashflow Tips for Your Small Business.
3. What You Need to Know – When Getting a Logo Designed

In the 2007 movie The Bucket List, corporate billionaire Edward Cole and working class mechanic Carter Chambers meet in hospital and decide to do the things they’ve always wanted to do before they die. So why not take the same approach to your business and prepare your ‘Business Bucket List’? 

How many times have you heard people saying, “I’ll wait for the economy to pick-up” or “I’m getting ready for the next big wave”.  If you only had a year to improve your business and make a lot of money would you sit and wait for the economy to pick up? 

So why not make your ‘Business Bucket List’ now and see what you can achieve in 2011? 

Let’s get started with five items for business growth and survival that definitely should be on your Business Bucket List …

Create a brand not a business

Understanding the term ‘branding’ is the first step to successfully building a brand.  Search Google for ‘brand terms’ and get an impressive list of 13,400,000 results, from which you probably only need six …

Brand Promise – your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and the benefits you deliver

Brand Identity – the mark/s that visually present your brand

Brand Image – the set of beliefs around what your brand stands for Brand Strategy – how you promote and build a positive perception in your customer’s mind

Brand Positioning – how your brand stands against others

Brand Management – maintaining consistency with your brand

Make sure you have all the elements of a strong brand and not just a pretty logo – it’s really one of the best investments you’ll make.

Own your slice of the market 

Imagine the power of owning your product name in the marketplace – like Kleenex is to tissues.  On a local level own your space so that when people need your product or service they immediately find your business.

Invest in an online business platform instead of just a smart looking website, it’s what’s under the hood that counts!  It should include a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, an e-newsletter and Blog platform that links to Twitter, Facebook and other social media marketing platforms and effective search engine optimisation.

 Create a memorable customer experience 

Successful marketing is about attracting and retaining customers with a total experience that stimulates all the five senses every time they come into contact with your business.

Introduce soft background music in your office or shop and provide mints or chocolates at reception.  Make your signage and marketing collateral visually appealing.   Do you have a fresh newly cleaned office smell? If not you could burn some relaxing incense.

Create a total customer experience and you’ll have them coming back for more – it really does make a lot of ‘sense’. 

Get more bang for your buck

Get a bigger bang for your marketing dollar by cutting out wasted, non-effective marketing activities. To do this however you need to measure what works and what doesn’t.

Sophisticated online and social media marketing can give you real-time results like who has received your e-newsletter, who opened it and where they went next.  Once you know what’s working you can put more of your budget towards that and take it away from activities that are producing mediocre results.

Reinvent the wheel

Just because everyone in your industry is doing things a certain way, that doesn’t mean you have to follow suit.  Get creative, be innovative and demand to be noticed for doing things differently.

Bring in your team for a ‘creative brainstorm’, research your customers’ needs or bring in a creative marketing expert who will see your business from the ‘outside’ and therefore start you thinking ‘outside’ of the square.

You may also interested in:

1. If Image is Everything – How do You Look?
2. DIY Marketing Ideas List
3. Marketing for a Start Up Business

Your image in the marketplace determines how people respond to your brand and creating the right first impression is vital to attracting long term customers.

A business image is made up of three main areas – your visual image, your sensory image and your subliminal image.  Together these combine to produce the ‘feeling’ of doing business with your organisation.  What kind of feeling do you want your business to convey - trustworthy, dynamic, modern, traditional, fast or caring for example?

So firstly let’s take a look at your visual image. 

Your visual image includes your logo, marketing materials, signage, online presence and advertising.  Everything from the colour palette you select for your logo to the typeface you use in your marketing determine who you are.  For example if the feeling you want to deliver is that of a ‘smart’ organisation then your logo should be sophisticated, clean and modern with colours that promote creativity and professionalism.

Secondly your sensory image.

This is where you can really enhance the company image.  A sensory image is looking at how your business communicates with the customer across all senses of sight, touch, smell, hear and taste.  A local fashion chain for example may create their ‘fresh’ sensory package in the following way – a plasma screen in the store showing people enjoying life in the clothes they sell (sight), convenient, brightly coloured changing rooms where customers are encouraged to try on the clothes (touch), incense or fresh flowers throughout the store (smell), background music or a water feature (sound) and chocolates, mints or fresh fruit at the counter (taste).

And finally the subliminal image.

This is how you ‘interacts’ with the customer from the wording on your website to the way your staff talk to your customers. It’s this image that helps forge a connection between the customer and your brand – the hidden feeling of wanting to keep doing business with you and not your competitor.

Why not test out your business image by being the customer for a change? Come into work as a customer and measure how your business makes you feel then look at ways to improve that experience.

You may also interested in:

1. Your Business Bucket List for 2011
2. Marketing for a Start Up Business

So you’re thinking of starting a business?  You’ve probably got a great idea, an exciting product or a service that your going to provide – the foundations of any good business, but what are you going to call it?

Like many start-up businesses you may consider mixing your name with your partner’s name and come up with something like Jotom or Bevmax.  Although that may mean something to you (and your partner) it says very little to your customers.  Your business name should communicate what you ‘do’ or ‘how’ you do it.

The name should be a short as possible – long business names do not perform as well as shorter names because they are harder for potential customers to remember or even spell when searching for you on the Internet.

Imagine Qantas today if they were still marketed under their full name of Queensland and Northern Territories Airways System.

Avoid generic names like Green Printers or Cars Online as these will be harder to register as a business name and a domain name.

Start with a list of ten or twenty ideas and show them to your friends, family and business associates to comment and select their favourites.  By doing this you are get in return some instant ‘market research’ from a mixed age audience, representative of your future customer base.

Ask yourself – does the name create a ‘positive’ feeling for my business?

Next check the business name availability through ASIC’s free company name search at www.asic.gov.au then if the domain name is available at www.netregistry.com.au  Every business today needs a web presence and your domain name is your ‘online’ street address so it is important that you register a domain name as well as your business name.

Now that you have your new business name there is one more thing to add your positioning statement.  It’s this one liner that will set your business away from its competitors – like FedEx’s ‘absolutely, positively overnight, Hungry Jack’s ‘the burgers are better’, Bose ‘better sound through research’ and Saab’s ‘move your mind’.  Your positioning statement should offer a benefit and give the customer a reason to buy from you and not your competitor’.

So armed with your new business name and a dynamic positioning statement all you need now is the logo – but that’s another story …

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Pick up the yellow pages, or type “printing” on-line and you will find a multitude of companies vying for your business.  How do you know which one to choose.

Amongst the lists of printers there will be some who are really good printers who provide good quality print jobs at a reasonable cost, then there are others whose quality and price is questionable.  How to tell the good from the bad?

Firstly you need to decide whether you want to deal directly with a printer, or whether you want to leave that to your Graphic Designer or Marketing Agency. That’s a personal choice that we won’t go into today.  If you choose to deal directly with a printer, then here are some tips on ensuring the printer you choose is a good one:

Word of Mouth Referral

Without doubt, the best way to find a good printer is by personal referral.  Ask other business colleagues or companies who you do business with which printer they use and ask them about the quality of printing and service they receive.

Your Own Research

If no one can refer you to a good printer, then you will need to do your own research.  Look to see how many printers are located in your local area.  It’s much easier to build a good relationship with a printer who is close-by than by a printer on the other side of Australia. Once you have found a list, give them all a call.  Ask them to send you some samples of a letterhead, some business cards and a promotional flyer.  If they are proud of their work, they will be more than happy to do this.  Ask them to include a quotation for a promotional flyer, lets say 1000 DL flyers, 150gsm Gloss, Full colour.  (Don’t ask for a quote for business cards.  Many printers price business cards well below cost just to get new customers in the door).  Make a note of which ones were the most helpful and easy to deal with then wait and see what turns up in the mail.

Once you have received your samples, you may have already eliminated a number of printers from your list. Using your telephone notes, samples and quotation, you are now in a much better position to make your choice.  Look carefully at the printing, ensure it doesn’t look blurry, and that the text is crisp (look for pink or yellow shadows on the text – this often shows lack of registration – not a good look).  Rub the coloured areas onto some white bond paper, does it smudge easily?  If its not varnished, it may rub a little, but it shouldn’t be too much.

Large Amounts of Printing

If you intend ordering a large amount of printing, then I would make one final suggestion.  In today’s market it is often difficult to tell if a company is a genuine printer, or a print broker.  The best way to find out is to visit their premises.  Most printers are happy to show you around their factory, they are proud of their operations and will always show you their latest printing press, or digital press.  These machines can be quite impressive, so you’ll find it quite an interesting exercise.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, you are an important customer, who knows how big your company might grow. A good printer will recognise this and treat you with respect.

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Being informed before having a website done will ensure your website is created for your particular market and to be a successful marketing tool and not just a pretty online brochure.

Before Visiting the Website Company

• What is your product/service?
• Do you want to grow over the next 5 years and add to your offering?
• Who are your target markets?
• Do you know what your competitors are doing and what their websites look like?
• Do you have an idea on how you want the website to look?
• Do you have examples of other websites you like?
• Do you want a subscribe function? articles section? Or specials page?
• How often do you need to or want to update your website?

Design Options & Edits

• Is the company website designers or developers – or both? Ideally you want both. This will enable you to have a professional design and also an effective build.

Designing for Your Market

• Are they also experienced marketers? This will ensure the website is designed for your target market 

What is Included?

• Do they write the content for you? Or do anything with the content?
• Are images included?
• How many pages can you have?
• How long will it take from signing off to completion?

Marketing and Statistics

• Can they provide you with an online marketing plan to assist in the promotion of your new website?
• Have they set up Google Analytics for you so you can track your website statistics?

Building for SEO

• Often websites are “optimised” for the keywords chosen by either the client or website company that they think are best. Choosing keywords out of thin air is not recommended and a full keyword analysis should be undertaken to find out exactly what people are searching for
• A thorough competitive keyword analysis should be done at the beginning stages – before the site map is developed for your website.
• Everything should then be designed around this, your pages, your content, your title tags, meta descriptions etc

Building Your Website - Tables vs CSS

Ask you web designer/developer whether they use tables or CSS (cascading style sheets) for your website (you want CSS).

Also ask that the website meets W3C standards. You should check the validation of this before signing off and making final payment by using the validator at http://validator.w3.org/. You can also check for any CSS errors as well by validating the CSS at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Custom Design vs Templates

Often website companies claim to give you a custom design although when you look at their previous websites you notice a trend. They often have a “set” number of template designs that your website will inevitably be designed deliberately to fit.

If this is the case – you should be paying less as it is easy for web companies to do this rather than to design one from scratch (custom design).

A way to combat this is to have a graphic designer “design” the website “look” and send that to the website company who then will build the site based on that design.

Search Engine Optimisation “Friendly”

• Are you or another provider besides the website company able to make changes to the content and all SEO related sections of your website?

Hosting & Monthly Fees

• Some website companies will just do the design and build for you and allow you to host your website elsewhere. This is a great position to be in because you are not locked in to hosting with the website company and you can save lots of money per month by hosting elsewhere. You can host your site for as little as $4.95 per month for a basic package. If you want someone to take care of hosting, URL and also updates for you, then the monthly fee can be worthwhile.

Where are your files?

• If you choose to leave your website provider, can you receive all your files?
• Do you have access to your files now?

Updates and Hidden Costs

• How much will it cost you to have minor updates made?
• How much will it cost to make structural changes to the website?

Content Management System

• There is a selection of content management systems out there. These allow you to update your website yourself.
• Not all are created equal. Here are some points you need to consider
  • Can you make changes to your menus?
  • Can you add/delete main menus and sub menus?
  • Can you change all areas where this is content?
  • Can you add/delete images, PDF files and other files?

Warranty

• Is there a warranty on your website? That is, how long do you have to make changes to the site before you start being charged?
• If you don’t find an error until 3-4months after it goes live, do you have to pay for this change?

In Summary

• Website companies like quick sales and often leave clients standard afterwards
• Be informed enough to make a comfortable decision
• Ask lots of questions – there is never a stupid question
• Don’t be wooed by sales talk – ask to speak to the technical guy (builder)

Have you had a good/bad experience wtih a website company?

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1. Seminar – What Website Companies Don’t Want to Tell You
2. Website Statistics 101
3. 10 Things That Should Never Appear on Your Website

So you have an idea for a business – here is a quick guide to get you thinking on some small business marketing tips you need to know, to get that idea out and into the marketplace.

Product & Service

• What is your product/service

1. Is it relevant? Exciting?
2. What is different about it?

Competition & Market Research

• Who are your competitors and what are they offering? At what price?
• Why are you different?
• Ask people from your “target market” what they like/don’t like about your product/service and also your proposed name

Business Name

• Find a good and relevant business name
• Is it available – check http://www.abr.business.gov.au/
• Find the .com.au (and .com) first before registering a name. Don’t be too concerned if .com is not available, but check what is currently on the .com site as it may offend or cause confusion

Logo & Branding

• What is the purpose of going into business? How do you want to be perceived?
• Seek advice on Trade Marking e.g. www.MarkYourTerritory.com.au
• Logo design should reflect name/brand and colours kept to max of 2-3

Marketing Your New Business via Multiple Channels

• Marketing is a long term strategy
• Be transparent in all your offerings and discussions
• Have a calendar to ensure you keep it up

Finding Your Customers

• Networking Events
• Business Development
• Promotional Activities
• Trade Shows/Events

Being Found by your Customers

• Be Online
• Networking Events
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Search Engine Marketing
• Public Relations

Online Special Focus

Website Design – need to ensure your website is designed with these things in mind

• Your product/service (each one to have their own page if possible)
• Your customer (ease of navigation and 3 clicks rule)
• Optimisation (ensure the website is built with SEO in mind)

Directory Listings

• Make sure you’re listed in all the relevant free directories. Not just to every possible directory – if it isn’t relevant people will see it as spam.

Blogs/Facebook/Twitter etc

• If you have something to share then Social Media is for you. You also need the time for the upkeep so start with the basics first then move to this. 

Collateral must haves 

• Website
• Email template
• Business cards
• DL flyers/brochures

Collateral when budget allows 

• Postcards
• Posters
• Banners
• Car signage
• Shop front and POS signage
• Promotional items

Communicating with your Contacts &Customers

Once you have a contact and/or a client, you can’t just forget about them!

• Build A Mailing List
• Sending out email newsletter as frequent as it is relevant to do so 
• Your Customers are your Sales Team – word of mouth is the most affordable way to promote your business
• Repeat business from current clients - Start a loyalty program, say thank you

Tracking 

Don’t forget to ask “where did you hear about us” and keep a note of it

Case Studies & Testimonials

Where possible, have examples of your work and testimonials of clients.

Customer Service

This could be a simple “Thanks, we’ll get back to you as soon as possible”.

You may also interested in:

1. DIY Marketing Ideas List
2. Workshop – Marketing Essentials for the Start Up Business
3. DIY Marketing for Small Business Owners

Sole traders and small business owners are often unsure on what makes a good logo, how to go about getting one, what to expect to pay and what to ask for in a designer.

Here is a checklist to make sure you are making an educated choice when choosing a designer.

• A logo should be as simple as possible and try to keep it at 2 colours
• Don’t use a photo – these are hard to see when shrunk and also cannot be a Trade Mark as it isn’t an original design
• If you are a small business, try and have your industry directly or indirectly represented in the logo e.g. Greenminded Landscapes
• Set a budget before approaching designers
  • Expect to pay around $400 for just a logo design to up to $2,500 for a full branding and stationary design
  • When choosing a designer ask what the fee includes i.e.
    • Does it include the design files like Illustrator files? (this is handy in case you want to move designers)
    • How many versions of the one logo do your receive? E.g. do you get a black and white version?
    • Make sure you know how many revisions you can have with your designer before being charged extra
    • How long will the logo take to be designed
    • Don’t forget to Trade Mark your logo

Once you have a logo – here is a basic list of where your “logo should go”

• Stationary
  • Business cards
  • With compliments
  • Letterhead
  • Mailing labels
  • Invoices/quotes
  • Email signatures
  • Website
  • Signage
  • Advertising
  • Sales material and literature (online and print)
  • Apparel e.g. t-shirts, caps etc

Feel free to add northridge creations to your list of possible designers. All the best with your logo!

Feel free to share your experiences with getting a logo designed.

You may also interested in:

1. What Website Companies Don’t (want to) Tell You
2. Marketing for a Start Up Business
3. Why Do Small Businesses need Trade Mark Protection?