Sometimes a new freelance designer will find himself in an awkward position when managing finances. If you're working on a tight budget, which is normally the case with designers starting out in freelancing, the tendency is to seek work anywhere and everywhere, just to keep your business afloat.

In the beginning stages do your best to stay on the path you've outlined for your freelance business. Refer to your business plan, esp. your marketing and branding plans to guide you. I know as Styleapple grows we are faced with deciding who to partner and work with in order to maintain a consistency in our brand promise.

As your business grows, be aware of the projects and companies your brand is associated with. Just because their paying you doesn't mean it's the right gig for you. If the job doesn't align with your personal brand or the brand promise of your design firm, I would probably not recommend you take the job. Of course, if not taking the job means that your business fails, then you'll have to do what you have to do.

Overall, staying true to your core brand promise will keep your company on the right path giving you a better platform in which to grow. Diluting your brand for short term gain only clutters your message, making it much more difficult to define your brand to potential clients.

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1) You Provide A Great Product or Service That Cannot be Matched By Your Competition

Simply put, excel at what you do. Don't settle for being second. The only thing that stops you from being the best in your industry is that you stop trying to be the best.

2) Your Services Are Underpriced... Intentionally

In this competitive market, value is key. Providing a great product or service that's noticeably worth more than your offering is important. Be careful not to undervalue your product or service by trying to low ball the industry. The goal here is to excel in your service while maintaining a reasonable price. Note: Low balling your industry can backfire on you, where your customers think that your services may not be up to par with someone who is charging more. Find the sweet spot for your product or service.

I'm not telling you to undervalue your expertise, what I'm simply saying is to provide much more quality and service than the industry norm, or what your clients expect.

3) Your Projects Are Completed Earlier Than Projected

The truth is clients want their projects done yesterday. Once you've given the client a date of completion, that date is etched in their minds. Delivering the project on that completion date- in the client's mind, you've done your job. Anytime after that date you're late and have broken your ‘brand' promise - not so good for business. If you are early, by even a day or two, this gives the client another reason to toot your horn for you. They will tell their colleagues and friends that you are professional, efficient and the go-to guy for your type of design services. Even if ‘early' was only a day early. I think businesses still underestimate the power of word of mouth even with all of the social technology around us.

4) You Have Personalized and Knowledgeable Customer Service

Personally, customer service is on top of my list of keys to being successful in this industry. I am a HUGE fan of good customer service. Not only good but rather great customer service. No one remembers good- people tend to remember great and exceptional, and of course bad.

Case in point: I remember hiring a design company to do a project, and one day I phoned the account manager to get some information. That person was completely incapable of answering basic technical questions about my project. She had to refer me to the designer, who of course was not available to talk. Great customer service can make up for shortcomings in other areas in your design business process (hopefully there are none :) )

5) Your Design Business Uses Cutting Edge Technology - Utilizing The Most Current and Relevant Tools in Your Industry.

When a client asks for you to do a project for them, they have already assumed that you'll be using the most current technology or process, unless otherwise stated. Anything less is a strike against your company product or service, Period. You should keep up with your industry, getting left behind is not an option.

6) You Are an Expert/ Thought Leader in Your Industry

Clients hire you because you can do something they can't do themselves; otherwise, they would do it themselves. They also hire you because they perceive that you are an expert at what you do. And as an expert you should have the knowledge to communicate intelligently about topics pertaining to your industry, current and future technologies, illustration styles, trending logo designs, etc, etc. And please, be able to provide answers to questions on why you've decided to use the Anivers font instead of Helvetica .

7) You Are Actively Involved In Your Client's Success

There is nothing better than a designer who takes the time to learn about a client's business. Not simply what the company does, and who their clients are, but their brand promise, inspiration and maybe the direction a company is looking to go into 3 to 5 years from now. The more you learn about your clients, the more information you'll have to satisfy their needs. And oh yeah, you'll actually start building a relationship with them. Maybe a relationship that can grow into a "business-friendship" - ultimately giving you the upper hand on future projects.

What are some things you've done that have pushed your company ahead of the competition?

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Here you are- brand new plan for a great business idea. This is the one, the big idea that will propel you to financial independence. You've already picked out the business colors and logo design concept, selected a couple of websites you'd like your company's website to mirror. You've sized up your competition and have located the niche you're pretty sure you can satisfy.

Now it's time to develop your website. You have done the necessary research, found the ‘perfect' web designer and are ready to get started. Your web designer says he needs you to detail as much as possible exactly what you want. You give him your full list of requirements - business colors, websites you like, a list of preferred fonts, and tell him to hit it out of the park... Three months later your website is completed and is nothing like you envisioned... Why? What happened?

Before I answer that, I would like to say as a designer with major entrepreneurial tendencies that I've learned a lot about the business of design. There are many things that I learned the hard way admittedly, and others that I've gotten sound advice for. This is one advice, I would put in the sound advice category.

Branding is an interesting process. I believe that branding is more of a study of psychology than design. One of the things most overlooked when starting a branding campaign is the importance of the branding ideas, and promise being shared from the very beginning; from the CEO, to the employees, to the HR department, and right down the line to the woman that cleans the office at the end of the day.

It's a mental collection of your brand ideas with everyone involved, that when combined in their most potent form enables an amazing brand synergy leading to major branding success for your new venture.

That being said, the web designer you choose should be engaged in this branding process as well. For he is more or less the architect of your dreams into their digital form. Therefore, take the time to find a freelance designer or design company that truly have a vested interest in your success.

How you find that designer or design company is an entire discussion onto itself. We had a heated discussion about this very topic here, and you should also check out David Airey's post on Design Agency Vs. Freelancer to get you started.

Back to your web designer:

He/she should not only want to know your colors and font preferences, but also inquire about your company's vision, your thoughts, your mission statement, your brand promise, your taglines, your wife and kids if necessary.....okay maybe not the wife   Your web designer must be a partner in the process. He should be the most important person at this juncture. After all, he will be the translator of your dreams into their digital reality.

He/she has the ability to provide a user experience that mimics and marries well with your company's brand promise. By engaging him early, you allow him to think of ways to implement not only your physical requirements on paper, but also the mission, vision, and brand promise of your company. Maybe he chooses just the right color orange or perhaps the typography and color combinations or button shape that speaks directly to your demographics.

Choose your web designer like you're choosing your next girlfriend or boyfriend. Because more than likely you'll be spending a lot of time with them, agreeing, disagreeing, arguing, breaking up and making up. Everything that a relationship goes through in order to grow and become successful.

My brother once told me that I should find a good web developer and stick with him or her (like a girlfriend) And today I say the same to you. Take the time to choose the right guy or gal for the job and your company will thank you for it many times over. Trust me!

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 "86% Of Consumers No Longer Believe What Brands Say About Themselves"

My past few posts have been trending in the direction of discussing the impact of personal branding on your corporate brand identity. So when I saw this statistic I needed to share it with you. I came across this Microsoft slide show presentation on Slideshare, a bit old but still very relevant. To me this should be a clear indication, if you had an ounce of doubt still left, that your brand identity is no longer controlled by you. The other part of the statistic indicated that " 78% of consumers believe what other consumers say about your brand" which is a HUGE number in my opinion. The slide show goes on to say that "The brands that will succeed going forward are the ones who's consumers tell the best stories." 

1. There Is More To Life Than Links & Sex
2. CMO Survey: Traditional Branding is 'Broken'
   

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Being that my primary job responsibility involves working with designers and design firm brands. I get a chance to see many design firms websites, portfolios, taglines, logos, advertising, social media avatars, etc, etc.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of design firms and designers going after the same market, especially now in a recession. What is it that sets you apart from your competition? Are you giving enough thought to what your design firm brand promise is? Is your company's brand promise different enough be remembered and relevant enough to your clients and customers. Allen Adamson, author of the book BrandSimple suggest that finding an obvious area that is not being addressed in your industry is a good place to start.

On our social media site, Styleapple.com - the branded designers social network. We give designers and design companies the opportunity to promote themselves primarily through there brand idea or tagline. By doing this we force designers who haven't thought about their brand promise to do just that; think about what they would like their demographics to know about them in 45 characters or less. It is important, especially now that your potential customers or clients know what you stand for in a simple easy to understand statement or promise.

What is your design company's tagline or brand promise? What is that product or service or guarantee that will get your clients emotionally attached to your brand?

Here is my brand challenge to you. Find 10 companies in your industry that you respect and consider your direct competition, figure out what their brand ideas are; whether it's their tagline or type of clients they market to (should be simple to find if they are effectively branding themselves). Then look at your brand idea or tagline or client roster and ask yourself. Am I offering something different and relevant enough to compete or am I just 1 in the 10,000 plus design companies hoping that my clients will choose me from a coin toss...

What is your design company's brand promise?

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UPDATE 3/2/2009:

 Found an interesting article on Advertising Age from a tweet by Dan Schawbel @danschawbel detailing a Personal Brand/Corporate Brand conflict with Ford Motors.   Interesting read. 

You can read part 1  of this series here:  Is Your Company’s Logo Design F*#$%ing Up Your Brand Image?

 Branding by definition implies a level of trust in your product or service, something that your clients and customers can depend on.  Apple for their innovation and service, Google for their quick and relevant searches.  A part of building a true brand aside from having a great product or service is the consistency of the brand’s image and actual brand message across multiple media platforms. 

But who is responsible for  your company’s brand message?

A few years ago a company’s  advertising and PR departments  were the gate keepers of their information and decided what and how the information was disseminated.  Now with the introduction of Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Styleapple,  your company’s blogs, etc,  you find that people are no longer interested  in what the company has to say directly, rather they seem to be gravitating to information being shared through employees and company executives themselves. 

I would personally rather follow Steve Jobs updates rather than  Apple, Inc. updates on Twitter (if I had to choose)  Given the gloomy recollection of corporate information and how difficult it was to understand exactly what their press releases were about, I think that  bad taste in our months  still lingers…  even if it’s now disguised as a Twitter bird dressed up in Facebook clothing.  Taking a phase from our most recent American political election  “You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig” 

Frankly, Social Networking has drastically changed the way companies will build their brand images going forward, where your most valuable assets  become even more valuable  (Employees  and corporate execs now takes center stage in how well a company’s brand is communicated to the masses)  The important thing is to make sure the message is consistent and clear when your company’s brand becomes a sum of its parts or rather, a sum of your employees personal brands. Take a look at  How to Lay The Brand Foundation For A Consulting Business  Blogger, Dan Schawbel  for a bit more insight of how to start a cohesive branding strategy when your business has to manage your employee’s personal brand.

How do you manage your company’s brand when your employees are actively involved in Social Media Networking?

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And the winner is.... Barack Obama.  Congratulations Senator Barack Obama for becoming the first African American President of the United States of America.   I am in awe of your achievement.

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Inbound Marketing has been all the rave in many marketing circles lately and the question is... is it really that big a deal as marketers are making it out to be?  The short answer is yes.

Inbound marketing is summed up by Brian Halligan of Hubspot, a leading internet marketing company: "I advocate doing "inbound marketing" where you help yourself "get found" by people already learning about and shopping in your industry.  In order to do this, you need to set your website up like a "hub" for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through the search engines, through the blogosphere, and through the social media sites.  I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing and I advocate that those ratios flip."

Setting  your website up as a "hub" is key. The Barack Obama campaign has done just that, by implementing a variety of inbound marketing efforts including the blogosphere, the enormous involvement on popular social media networks as well as creating their own social media site and a well developed and optimized website complete with relevant tools to get the right information to the people. For example, a tax calculator that enables visitors to check what their tax reductions would be under a President Obama Administration.  Utilizing these tools together has effectively produced an influx of web traffic to the Barack Obama website.

Just  for fun I did a quick comparison of the Barack Obama website http://www.barackobama.com/ and the John McCain website http://www.johnmccain.com/ on Hubspot's Website Grader tool - A great tool to help you find ways of improving your website effectiveness.  What I found was very telling:

See Full Report >> 

Site: The 2 sites being compared: http://www.barackobama.com/, http://www.johnmccain.com/

Website Grade:  The grade Hubspot gives a website is based on the website's marketing effectiveness, considering a variety of factors including page rank, traffic rank, meta data, heading, etc...  Both sites rate fairly high in the Grade area, a 98% for John McCain and 95% for Barack Obama.

Google Page Rank: Both websites scored a pretty high page rank of 8

Traffic Rank:  This ranking is taken from the Alexa visitor traffic data. The traffic rank for Obama is 753 and McCain- 2580. The smaller the number- the better, just for a point of reference Google has a traffic rank of 1

Blog Rank:  Not Conclusive; Hubspot software did not detect the blog on the Barack Obama website  so I can't compare the two blogs using Website Grader.

But here is where it becomes even more interesting:

Delicious  Bookmarks: John McCain (Johnmccain.com) - 451 bookmarks, Barackobama.com - 2797 bookmarks; approximately 5 times more bookmarks.

Inbound Links:  Johnmccain.com - 1,280,323 links, Barackobama.com - 3,161,675, that's roughly 2 million more inbound links. Inbound links to a website is one of the key sources of traffic.

So how does all of this translate into web traffic:  according to compete.com John McCain website in September had roughly 3.1 million visitors where as barackobama.com pulled in roughly 5.5 million visitors.

Inbound marketing should be a major part of any design company looking to be competitive online.  Finding ways to increase your inbound links is not an option going forward. One of the first things you can do going forward is to take a close look at your design business and brainstorm ideas that you believe would add value to your industry.  Your first thought should exclude any benefits to your company; only think of your industry and the demographic needs.  Once you have figured out the tools that would be truly beneficial to your industry demographics - then you package that tool to represent your design business. Our next Topic in the Branding Campaign series is Website esthetics, ease of use and how the Barack Obama website manages the customer's buying cycle and website conversion.

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Since this is the final month of elections for the Presidency of the United States - Election Day November 4, 2008.  I've decided to dedicate the next four weeks on the elections and show how social networking and branding can be effectively utilized.  That being said, I wanted to share with you what I believe is the most effective branding strategy in recent American history.

After watching the vice presidential debates last week It struck me that I'm in the middle of a very historical event.  I've never been so engaged in American politics before.  Seriously, this has been such  an experience to be right in the middle of what will go down in history as one of the most notable periods in America - the probable election of the first African American President in American history.

What's even more interesting is how clearly branding played a major role.  Two years ago Senator Barack Obama was a name that no one knew or cared about.  Two years later Senator Barack Obama is positioned to becoming the first African American president of the United States.   Knowing the colorful history of Blacks in America you could easily see why this event is simply extraordinary.   With that said.  I'd like to give credit  to Senator Barack Obama and his campaign for an exceptional campaign thus far by effectively creating a brand in 2 years what simply would  take other companies or organizations decades to accomplish.  

The Obama campaign proved that by effectively utilizing the tools of social media one can take down arguably "the most powerful Democratic family in a generation - one that understood the power of money in politics and commanded a network of wealthy donors that has financed the Democratic Party for years" - the Clintons.   Of course it goes without say that many factors played a role in the success of  this campaign thus far, some of which can be seen simply by a visit to the Barack Obama's website - http://www.barackobama.com/.  This website is a blueprint for anyone looking for a reference of an absolutely flawless machine of effective internet marketing which by the way has helped propelled this campaign to raising nearly half  a billion dollars in donations - A political campaign record.  So how did they do it?  Well,  I will attempt to dissect certain marketing elements that I believe assisted in the extreme success of this campaign and hope  that I can shed some light on areas where you can improve your  marketing efforts in your design businesses.

 For the next few weeks I will be talking about:

• The role social networking played in the success of the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign
• Branding and Logo Design - The techniques and strategies used to effectively brand Senator Barack Obama as the "CHANGE" candidate.
• SEO and inbound marketing efforts that help create an influx of web traffic to the Barack Obama website.
• Website esthetics, ease of use and how the Barack Obama website manages the customer's buying cycle and website conversion
• The advertising and marketing tools that contributed to effectively reaching even more supporters to help build the campaign base.
• Final results of the 2008 American Election 2008.

To make it more interesting I've decide to do a comparison of the two candidates running for president:  Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain and see if we can deduce who is utilizing their  marketing  efforts most effectively.   So stay tuned - the next post will be on The Role Social Networking Played in the Success of the Barack Obama's  Presidential Campaign.

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My last blog post was about Google releasing its 2001 search engine for show for their 10^th  year Anniversary  and how their logo has changed since then -  pointing to current company growth and design trends as two possible reasons for the change.  I was since energized to find other top company logo design that has changed over the years.  What I found was that in most cases the logos were noticeably similar to their predecessors as expect  but still showcased a modern spin that appeal to the current design trends in their respective industries.  What I found kind of funny was the Starbucks coffee logo changed from a practically x-rated half naked mermaid to a more censored version as their demographics grew.   I wasn't sure whether they wanted me to get a cup of coffee or  get a room  ☺ Anyway, check out the list, let me know what you think.

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