Image Credit:  From The Design Portfolio of Ana Gomez

As we depend on the web more and more to sell our product or service, it's important that we take the things that have worked for us offline and implement them online . When selling was done on the streets with a briefcase or vacuum cleaner in hand, it took years of trial and error to figure out what worked and what didn't. Now that the process has been somewhat perfected, it makes sense to transfer those methods to our online efforts. There are 6 key steps in the sales process:

1) Prospecting - The act of finding the right clients or customers to sell your product or service (Target Demographics).
2) Contact - The actual contact you make with a potential client, either in person, on the phone, email, snail mail or on the web.
3) Sales Presentation - The sales pitch, tour or description of your product or service and the explanation of why it's the right product for your potential clients.
4) Handling Objections - Objections are the reasons why your client or customer will not buy your product, whether it's the price, time or quality of your product or service.
5) Closing the Sale - Closing the sale is the summary of the benefits of your product/service and finalizing payment options or service agreements.
6) Follow-up/Service - Following up after the sale by checking in to make sure the product is working correctly or servicing the product.

These are the steps your sales process will most likely follow whether you're selling an actual product or looking for new clients. Having a blueprint of these steps can be an asset when looking to increase your sales conversion rates.

With that said, your design portfolio website should embody the essence of these six steps in order to take full advantage of every user that visits your design portfolio website. Here are some suggestions on how you can implement these offline techniques in order to be more effective online.

PROSPECTING
OFFLINE: Prospecting offline usually includes lots of cold calling, showing up at potential clients offices... sometimes unannounced, sending out mailers and promotional offers, etc.
ONLINE: Prospecting online includes various social networking activities, blogging, search engine optimization, email newsletter subscriptions, email campaigns, and other inbound marketing techniques.

CONTACT
OFFLINE: An initial contact offline can be made through a cold call either on the phone or in person, a response to a promotional mailer, or email reply to information sent to your potential customers.
ONLINE: An initial contact online refers to a website visit by a potential client, someone sending you a message on Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin, connecting with you through instant message (IM), or leaving a comment on your personal or business blog.

SALES PRESENTATION
OFFLINE: The Sales presentation is your sales pitch about your product or service which includes a description of the product and benefits to your potential clients.
ONLINE: An online sales pitch or presentation can be tricky to master since you're not personally guiding your visitors through your website, so your website needs to be set up to do exactly that. To get an idea of how a client might search your website read "10 decisions your clients will make before hiring you". Most People don't have the time to figure out how to navigate your website. It's important to make your website intuitive enough that your visitors conduct their own tour of your design portfolio. Ana Garcia, a 3d Designer on Styleapple does a great job of introducing her design portfolio and giving potential clients a tour of her work and design expertise.

HANDLING OBJECTIONS
OFFLINE: Handling objections is a skill that will close many deals for you. To effectively handle objections you must answer all the questions your potential clients have way before you ask them to sign a contract or get their credit card number.
ONLINE: Handling objections online is simply answering the questions your visitors have in the very beginning. For example: What does it cost (Provide a general price list for projects, i.e. Print Work, Illustration Work, Branding, etc) What kind of work have you done in the past (Showcase of previous projects or client recommendations) What tools do you use ? (PHP, Mysql, Adobe Photoshop, Ruby, Illustrator, Dreamweaver,etc). BTW, a great way to handle objections online is by integrating a live chat button on your website incase a client has a quick question for you.

CLOSING THE SALE
OFFLINE: Closing the sale offline is the summary of the benefits of your product/service and the moment you ask for their credit card number or signature on your service agreement.
ONLINE: Closing the sale online happens the moment your website visitor fills out your contact form, contacts you on Skype, initiate a live chat session, email or give you a direct phone call. It's important to have multiple ways of contact, so your clients can reach you in a format convenient to them.

FOLLOW-UP/SERVICES
OFFLINE: Follow-up/Service is where you keep your clients happy and build your referral base. Performing any necessary service to make sure your product is working correctly or being there to answer questions or concerns.
ONLINE: Follow-up/Service online includes detailed updates on current project progress. Having them subscribe to your blog, connecting with them on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. and having them subscribe to your monthly newsletter where you can share promotions, design advice and request referrals.
The truth is, you have a small window to close the deal. Just like selling offline, you have a small window in which to get your client's attention. Guide them carefully through the sales process, manage their objections and get them to contact you either by a phone call, filling out a contact form or requesting a project quote.

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Does Social Media Networking Really Influence Your Brand Reputation?

According to the latest  Marketing Sherpa “Chart of the Week”  Social media networking absolutely influences your brand reputation. 92% of companies polled said that social media marketing is effective in building their brand reputation.  Some of the other interesting numbers included:  Increase Brand Awareness? :  91% said yes, Increase search Engine Rankings? : 87%  said yes, and Increase Website Traffic: 87% said yes.

Building your company's brand reputation can be both tricky and fragile in today's social media driven economy. However, if managed correctly building your brand image online can be both interesting and potentially lucrative for you. Even in an economic downturn your clients and customers are still actively looking for you online. Effectively utilizing search engine marketing coupled with the right social networking tools can advance your business from startup to simply becoming a star in your industry.

As you know I’m CEO of Styleapple - The Branded Designers Social Network.  We help designers and design companies with their online or digital branding strategies.   Recently I’ve come clean admitting that I am indeed, a social media junkie,  which on the web is almost impossible to stay sober.  Social Networking sites are everywhere.  The trick is to know which ones are best for your business. 

Some of the social networking tools I currently use for marketing and promoting my business are Twitter, Twitterfeed,  LinkedIn, Flickr, Styleapple (A social networking site we've developed to promote and market design companies brands), The Branded Designers Blog, Designfloat,  Digg, Small Business Brief, and Sphinn to name a few.

Your first step is to find social networking communities where the members are either the demographics of your customers, clients or potential business contacts. Take an active role in discussions and really make an effort to be ‘social’ , offer your help and expertise in asking and answering group questions. A great resource on social networking do's and don'ts is  Eric Brantner Article on the 10 Secrets of the Best Social Media Users 

You can also find a great list of social media sites with descriptions of the kind of industry and benefits of each site from the following two articles:  48 Social News Websites You Can Use and 10 Great Places To Promote Your Designs.

Social media marketing has been tried and tested, no more excuses. This is a great time to build your design company’s brand, whether you’re a startup or have been around for a while.   Take the time to learn, engage and reap all the benefits of becoming  ‘SOCIAL’

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You know you're good when you can create a viral YouTube video about inbound marketing while using inbound marketing techniques to effectively promote your inbound marketing business. Simply Genius, Kudos to the guys at Hubspot. 

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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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When I decided to start this blog,  I was looking for a name that would represent my focus on exploring creative marketing techniques to promote and grow the careers and businesses of designers and design companies.  Most of what I've written thus far has been about  getting clients, maximizing website visitors, implementing social networking and utilizing SEO marketing techniques. The name Branded Designers was chosen to represent my commitment to finding the most effective marketing techniques that will contribute to defining and growing designers and young design companies brands.

 A brand as defined by Wikipedia is "a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product or service. A brand serves to create associations and expectations among products made by a producer. A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols and sound which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality. The key objective is to create a relationship of trust."  In layman terms  "A brand is a person's gut feeling about your product or your service or your small business." Noted Brain B of Little Engine's Blog.

Now why is this important to a designer's livelihood and success going forward?  One reason is competition.  As we enter into this global economy where more and more designers are leaving the corporate environment and are starting their own businesses. It's becoming increasingly important to identify yourself as an expert that can deliver exceptional service that will command professional respect and client loyalty. That being said, a branded designer is a creative professional or design company who has successfully created a ‘feeling' or reputation in the eyes of the general public, clients and colleagues that is viewed favorably and has a strong positive impact on the social and financial bottom lines of their businesses.

In summary, the goal of the Branded Designers blog is to assist in the growth of the designer or design companies seeking to become branded; to research and discuss tools and internet marketing techniques, like inbound marketing through social networking and the blogosphere, like methods to improve website conversion rates, like evaluating methods and rules of  engagement of customers and clients.  My hope is to develop a resource that will truly help with the success and continued growth of the designer entrepreneur.

Here's a great slide show on branding and it's Importance going forward:

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Lately, I've been monitoring the traffic to my website very closely.  Depending on the day or what article I post, which ones are picked up or published essentially  dictates what referrals sites show up on my beautiful pie chart :) 

Recently I've noticed an upward trend  of visitors  coming from the Google image search.   Google search accounts for roughly 40% of my daily traffic,  about 20%  of that comes from Google image searches.   This doesn't mean  you  should immediately  go and upload as many images as possible to your website or blog (let's face it, an image search is just that, more than likely your conversion rate on an image search is not worth discussing unless you're iStockphoto, Getty images or the likes)  but why not take the opportunity to maximize the effectiveness of something you're doing anyway.  For example when you're uploading an image to your blog or website,  make sure the image is relevant to the content and the name of the image adds value . For example  if you're writing  a blog about logo design, calling your image, image 1 doesn't help, instead  logo design 1 or company logo design  might be a more effective name. Placing keyword rich titles and relevant alt tags are all very important to identifying your images.  

So the next time you're uploading an image to your blog or website try not to blow off the minor details to quickly see the preview of your gorgeous layout :)  Instead take some time to implement the image details that will give your website the edge in Google ‘s image search results. 

Web Design Library wrote a great article on the "9 ways to increase website traffic  using Google image search" The article goes into detail on implementing alt tags anchor texts and even how to set up the enhanced image search feature in Google Webmaster tools.  It's a worthwhile read. Now,  Is content still king, of course it is, but why not supplement your King with a Queen - your well named , title, tagged  and enhanced image Queen.

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I like it when I can go to one place and get everything I need. Like Walmart or Target, you can buy face wash and have a slice of pizza while waiting on line. I even wrote an article on tips on choosing a web designer and outlined a list of things a customer should look for when looking to hire (another combo deal) but after taking a second look at my recent post I realized that I was a little unfair and would like to clarify a few things; specifically the relationship between web designers, SEO and internet marketing consultants.

Your web designer should not be your SEO consultant or your internet marketing consultant for one simple reason. He might charge you double for his services... and rightfully so. You'd be getting two professionals for the price of one. Don't get me wrong I still think a SEO savvy web guy is probably someone you should keep on your short list but I don't think it's the norm in our industry yet. As the website design industry becomes more competitive; you'll begin to see the ‘all in one' philosophy become more prevalent. SEO, internet marketing consulting and website design is an inevitable marriage primarily due to the intense competition on the web for designers bidding for new projects and companies competing to be on Google's top 10 SERPS. In fact, I think SEO marketing companies should be cozying up with as many web designers and design companies across the globe as humanly possible-it just makes good business sense to me.

When creating a website it's crucial to design it with your customers in mind, identified by individual needs. David Meerman Scott calls these individual identities your buyers personas in his recent book on Marketing and PR. It's no longer about how cool your site looks but rather how effective your website is. As we are at the last phase of design for styleapple.com- a portfolio and job site for designers and design companies. we had to take a step back and rethink our website appeal and answer a few basic questions:

• Who are our demographics, i.e. web designers, graphic designers, design companies, pr firms, etc?
• Are we answering all the initial questions a new visitor might have, like what's this website about or where do I find the freelance jobs?
• Are we giving them the option to identify themselves once they arrive on the site? i.e. creative pro, design company, etc.
• Are we giving them the information they need once they've identified themselves? For example a designer might be interested in creating a design portfolio, browsing creative job listings or looking for new inspiration.
• Are we providing adequate information to answer our site visitors questions? i.e. why should I join Styleapple? , how will creating a portfolio help with my getting new projects?, how can posting a job help me find the right talent?
• Are we revealing the full functionality, product or service that the website offers? i.e. this site will give you additional exposure outside of your website, provide you with a personalize URL for client review, give you an opportunity to meet other creative pros like yourself?
• Are we giving them options of solutions? i.e. posting your portfolio online will help in getting your work noticed by potential clients or signing up for job alerts will send you updates when new projects become available?
• Do we have appropriate conversion forms at the time our site visitors are ready to take action, buy or subscribe, i.e. create portfolio, sign up for job alerts, or post a job forms?

You should not expect your web designer to answer these very important questions for you. I would suggest consulting with an internet marketing consultant or someone who knows about internet marketing to discuss this process as it is vital to your company's website success. David Meerman Scott's book "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" is a pretty good read and gives some great tips when designing or redesigning your company's website.

Is it too much to ask a web designer to know SEO and Internet marketing techniques to maximize your website effectiveness? What's your opinion?

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I am a strong supporter of design companies that stand by their names and have a strong sense of value and integrity. I know it sounds like the beginnings of a speech for the Small Business Owners of America. But seriously, I've been at the other end of a well spoken and polished salesman backed by a less than stellar design company with accolades anyone would have agreed was good enough to trust from sources like Inc. 500 and the Better Business Bureau. I say all that to say that no longer is a company's validation and reputation left up to bureaus with no faces or awards with no merit. Companies now have to prove to their consumers directly, that they are who they say they are. Having said all that, it's the companies that are most transparent that will become super successful going forward. The companies that are willing to expose themselves to their clients and customers are the ones that will really benefit from this social media surge. Which, in a cool way lends itself to a better more honest business relationship between client, customer and company. Isn't that awesome, a customer-company relationship with honesty built in. The Genius of Social Media.

Please share with me your thoughts on this.  Can the social media really change the way businesses do business?

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Chances are good that you're not,  statistically anyway.  Shop.org reported that an average retail website conversion rate is around 1.8 percent(%), some are even quoting numbers in the  0.1 % conversion rate range.  This means if you're getting 1000 visitors to your website every month, chances are good that you're probably only receiving  one(1) sales per month - 12 sales per year if you're lucky.  Not very good numbers  unless you're selling million dollar homes  (and I haven't seen many designers selling million dollar homes lately)  So I ask you- Is how many monthly visitors  to your website really your company's goal?

Probably not.  Your design company's goal  is more likely sales, annual revenues,  number of paying clients, number of paying customers, Dollars,  Pounds, yens, Euros, Rupees, Rubles, The Benjamins, Cream... and any other names we can come up with to describe money.  So the real question should be:  How do we get our conversion rates up?  And the short answer is research - that how, yes that ugly word again. 

What's great about the research now though,  is that it's more accessible than ever before primarily due to social media and inbound marketing techniques.    Your demographics- your customers and clients are communicating with you every minute of every day. It's like that little voice in your head that won't shut up.   You're getting live unfiltered "face time" with your customers though social media avenues like Twitter, Facebook, Stumble Upon ,  LinkedIn and the Blogosphere.   

THE SOCIAL MEDIA & LEAD GENERATION - PERFECT TOGETHER

With social media your leads no longer have to only come from your website.  They can come from your Facebook business page or group [setting up your company profile in which your company can receive fans (another word for leads)  or rather people that are interested in your product or service], your  LinkedIn professional group [creating a business group related to  your core business can invite professionals, customers and clients alike to join - giving you the opportunity to network and grow your business - another way to cultivate your leads] ,  your personal and business Twitter profile [Great for meeting new clients, customers and colleges in your industry - yet even more leads] , your Ning social network or group and many other social networking sites on the web.   Now the difference between the contacts you make using  social networking  are that they are more "prep" or qualified leads for your services than visitors that  end up on your website by a random combination of keywords in Google.    Now that we have better leads in our pipeline,  it's time to convert them to customers.

SITE NAVIGATION TO THE RESCUE

Your website or page navigation needs to be paid very close attention to.  Visitors are first looking for information before your product or service.  Once you've provide the right information to them , its only then that you can move to the next step in the process:  Your website should welcome your visitors, ask them what they are looking for (providing options), direct them to the answers or information they requested, and only then should you suggest a  product or service that will help them solve their problems.

GETTING TO KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET CAN ONLY INCREASE YOUR CONVERSION RATES

Take the time to really understand the culture of your customer demographics  and mimic that language on your website.  We learned this in psychology 101, mimic the people you meet and they become your friends or customers or clients. The only difference is now you're doing it on the web.   "Your  virtual world  is no different than  your "real world".   A good practice is to visit your website as a customer every day:  Ask yourself if you would subscribe or buy or sign up for your product or service your website is offering.  Don't be fooled,  the" build it and they will come" strategy is long gone; you have to go get them and bring them back... kicking and screaming.  :-)

More Articles on Website Conversion Rates:

Understanding Your Websites' Conversion Rate Can Make or Break Your Online Business

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