Designing for Sales Success

YOUR IDENTITY

“Put your make-up on already!!!”  

Your identity is like your driver’s license.  It has your picture that shows what you look like, it identifies you with your contact information and while a driver’s license uses a number to track you … your business’ identity will use a more visual means to burn into the minds of your customers … who you are, what you look like and why they care.

In this section we’ll cover the elements that make up your identity, putting together one that really works and little secrets for things like printing of materials in a way that will save you ton’s of money!

LOGO
“Smile for the camera!!!”  

A logo is to your business, as your photograph on your license is to you.  It quickly identifies you in a visual manner.  It will speak volumes about you to your audience, without ever saying a word.  

When creating your logo, you need to take a few things into consideration.  First, who are you?  What do you represent?  What do you want the viewer to feel or think when they look at you or think of you?  What is the mood you want to create? 

In coming up with a logo, you need to plan for a full color version, a grayscale version and a black and white version.  Why?  Well, rest assured there are going to be many ways you will need to represent your logo based upon your available cash to spend and what the displaying medium requires.

FULL COLOR LOGO:

Your color logo is great for your website, for when you can print things reasonably on your color inkjet printer, for web advertising, etc … and for any color advertisements you might be fortunate enough to afford or that has been donated to you. 

You must remember that printing in full color is expensive and does not become cost effective until you are printing in quantities of multiple thousands depending upon the piece.  Unless you are dealing with digital reproduction (for want of a better term, color copying but much more advanced).  While this can still be expensive, when you compare cost-per-piece with the short quantities you want to run, it’s much more cost effective for a small business.

GRAYSCALE LOGO:

Is a fabulous representation that can be used in quality black and white photocopying and can be used by a smart commercial printer (or graphic artist), to be able to give you a splash of color with using only 1 or 2 colors of ink on a press. 

Using shades of black can give the impression of more colors, more depth, than black and white alone, while being less expensive to reproduce than full color.

BLACK AND WHITE LOGO:

You will always need a good clean high resolution black and white file of your logo for many purposes such as providing to those who need it for general business advertising (i.e. the yellow pages, newspapers, magazines, community guides, etc).  It’s what you will use when you cannot afford full color and when your grayscale logo will not reproduce very well in that medium.

It is also a handy thing to have if you ever choose to hand off anything to a graphic artist.  With this file, they can properly colorize and place your logo into any sort of environment needed.  

FONTS
“Is that what you’re wearing?”  

Your font selection is sometimes your entire logo yet it also sets a mood for your message.  When selecting fonts, there should be no more than 2 used in your identity representation (i.e. logo and business name) and perhaps one or two others used for content.  Mixing too many fonts together makes for a messy message that people can’t get through, don’t understand and/or creates negative thoughts about your organizational skills.

SERIF VS. SANS-SERIF VS. FANCY, VS. CALLIGRAPHIC:  

There are four basic classifications of fonts: serif; sans-serif; fancy or artistic fonts; and script or calligraphy.  For those of you who do not already know, a serif is a tail at the end of a letter such as seen in Times New Roman below:

 

See how the ends of the S flip up and the ends of the T flip down?  Those little “flips” are serif’s making this font, a serif font.  

Sans meaning “without” means that a sans-serif font is without serifs, such as Arial or Helvetica:

Notice that the ends of each letter end abruptly, straight, no flipping tails.  The same holds true for the content you are reading in this book.  The absence of these little “tails” or “flips” makes this font “without serifs” or part of the sans-serif family.

FANCY FONTS:

These can also be called artistic fonts.  They are interesting fonts such as handwriting, or fonts with little pictures as part of the letters.  Here is a small example of a few interesting ones:

CALLIGRAPHY OR SCRIPT:

Other options include calligraphic fonts, elegant scripts and fonts that mimic handwriting, or represent elegant handwriting of old such as the samples below:

COMBINING FONTS:

Just as some colors or fabrics clash … so do fonts.  Putting, for example, Edwardian Script with Freestyle Script … would be an example of clashing.  Combining perhaps Times New Roman with Californian would show little to no differentiation between the two fonts.  Two serif fonts … or two fancy fonts together, just don’t work.  The fancy fonts clash more than the serif’s, but the two serif fonts together, minimally, don’t complement each other very well and lend themselves to clashing or not being noticed as different in the first place.

A magnificent font combination is one serif font with one sans-serif font, such as you see in this book for the chapter level headings with the font used for the rest of the headings and the content itself.  They complement each other nicely:

Combining bold with non bold or italic with non-italic or bold non-italic … also creates very interesting combinations that work.  For example: BoldCalibri.   Bold with an italic of same font is very pretty.

Another effect I myself have used for a corporate logo in the past is the mixing of the same font, but its different weights together to make a single word.  For example: the font Eras, comes in many weights as follows: Eras Bold – Eras Demi – Eras Medium – Eras Light.

Try this idea on for size … lets pretend your name is “WidgetWorld.”  What if you were to represent it as follows:

It makes a very artistic looking logo that seems to fade off in the distance and is only made up of a combination of the same font family in different weights.  Now, combining this particular font may not really work for your organization as it sets a very high tech mood.  But consider playing around with fonts in your computer to see if you can come up with something you can show to a graphic artist to help him or her to understand your thinking.  

There are a lot of considerations that a really good graphic designer can help you with and I highly recommend fitting them into your marketing budget … that is, of course, IF they can also design for sales. 

NEXT TIME ...

Next time we'll talk about color selections, paper selections, and printing secrets to save money and still look like you have an identity created and maintained by the pro's!

"Do Not Speak Unless I Speak First, and probably not even then." The News Media's lack of listening skills.

I read an article today about how the online newspapers, or their online versions anyway, experienced record highs in 2008 in online traffic to their websites yet still, their revenues are falling.  I asked the question of my Twitter friends "what are they doing to capitalize on all that traffic?" 

It seems to me they have a valuable asset that they are underusing in so many ways, especially considering the new social networking mediums.  I don't believe I've seen any of them, even the tv network news sites, being interactive with readers enabling them to report on the news, to interact with the news casters and personalities, the journalists, etc.  There still seems to be a bit of a wall there. 

I do have a number of television news station political reporters linked to me on my twitter (and me to them) ... they at least get it, as do the political parties, even President Obama ... he followed me back ... Thanks Mr. Pres :).

So where are the news media falling down then?  Politics discovered the power of social networking in the last 2 Presidential elections, so I'm not surprised at all to find the political correspondents using twitter regularly.  I do see some of the big networks with "network" accounts, oodles of followers but they're not following anyone at all.  This isn't using social networking, this is just using Twitter as another news feed to tell another audience about themselves.  This is not what the world wants.

Tonight I became quite frustrated.  It came to my attention through twittering with friends, that NY had a 3.0 earthquake that was felt in NE New Jersey.  Being near there in PA, I wanted to know more about what's going on.  I could not find news about it anywhere at all!!!  Not even the geological society site had it (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/) about 30 min after I heard about it. 

What did I do?  I went looking at the big news tv station sites, nothing, went looking for a way to tell them it happened so someone could get the story out, nothing to be found.  So I went to newspaper sites, national ones, same story.  Then I started carousing local newspaper websites and guess what ... nothing again ... on either front.  The news media just doesn't seem to want to hear from us, the "little people" ... they want us to hear them though.  Very one-sided.

Perhaps when these organizations begin to take notice of how social networking really works, they realize that they can incorporate their audience's into their list of assets in things like reporting even, that the readers are not just the stupid "eyeballs" that get them advertising dollars but intelligent, knowledgeable people who want to help and participate ... and when they begin to leverage this power, then perhaps they may begin to see some turn-around in their bottom lines.

What do you think?  What have been your observations?

Geographical Connecting in Twitter?

I've seen a number of Twitterer's out there posting things like "looking to connect with people in xyz city/state" around the time I learned about http://twitter.grader.com. 

Twitter Grader assigns a score to you based on your posts, your followers/followings and those of your followers and so on.  While the # by itself I'm not sure really does anything for you, the interesting thing is that this site is another useful search tool within the Twitter community.

I was able to search easily, after getting my grade (a surprising 84%), for people in specific locations around the globe.  So to answer those who I've seen looking for people in certain areas, try getting graded at twitter.grader.com, then click the link that is made of your own geographical location.  It will show you others with that same geography in their profiles and leave a search bar at the top of the page so you can search for other locations.

Now, if I could just find one that helps me search for specific "interests" such as "theatre enthusiasts" or "theatrical producers" and the like :) now that would make it even more useful!

It's very interesting who you wind out connecting to just by posting 140 characters or less when thoughts occur to you, and sometimes just because of who you have followed.  Each day I wake up to more followers and I sit and think "now where did they come from, this is cool, wow, i'm surprised THAT person followed me first." 

I've even met someone who I think will be a new lifelong friend as time progresses.  Someone who coincidentally was moving to my hometown later this year.  How odd is that, talk about fate/kismet.

So broaden your horizons, get a Twitter account and shake the tree a bit, see what shakes loose.  You may join with just a bit of curiosity and wind out becoming a social networker extroardinnaire. 

An Eye Opener - Understanding Your Corporate Identity

So, how do you get your audience interested in learning your story in the first place so that you CAN prove that you have the knowledge and ability to solve their problems and otherwise service their needs?  

This is where your corporate identity comes into play.

Let's take a walk into the hypothetical for a moment ...

Picture for a moment, your company is hiring a new employee and you’re the lucky devil that gets to do the interviews.  This guy walks in for his interview.  He is wearing sweat pants with a hole in the knee, a wrinkled t-shirt, dirty high top sneakers and the worst bed-head you’ve ever seen in your life.  He flops himself into a chair without shaking your hand and says to you … “s’up?”  He hands you his resume that looks like he’d printed it out 50 years ago, the corners are turned up and torn, there’s a few fold creases, the paper is wrinkled in a few places and there’s a big coffee ring stain at the bottom of page one.

An extreme example, I know, but … I ask you … would you hire this person?  Would you be compelled to look deeper?  Would you read through his resume at any point, or pitch it when he leaves?  If you read it, do you think you'll believe any of his claims he’s made on his resume?  Or do you end the interview as fast as you can, wish him well and usher him out of your office, out of your life?

If you said get him out of there, as many probably would, you actually just made the biggest mistake of your life.  There was more to that man than was apparent from his poorly put together outer appearance … his “personal identity.”

Here is what you do not know about him, that his personal identity did not inspire you to learn or believe.  He’s a graduate of one of the Nation's top educational institutions -- top of his class.  He has all of the technical experience you require and then some as well as the bonus skills you specified would be beneficial in addition to the requirements.  He’s positively brilliant with an IQ well and above what is the norm and he’s available within your price range.  He’s really a nice guy who gets along well with others, he’s a team player and he’s highly motivated.  As with many brilliant people, he’s just a little quirky (hence his attire).  This man is exactly what you were looking for and you just ushered him out of your life.

As with his personal identity, your corporate identity has the same power to influence the viewer as to whether or not they give you a chance.  It’s a door opener, an ear perker, an attention getter.  It’s like a high quality business suit.

Now that I have your attention …

Ok, your beautiful identity just got you a chance to tell your story, to prove to the customer, you’re what they’re looking for.  What do you do now?  You don’t have much time, attention span’s can be very short.  

What do you say?

Whether or not you are speaking with the customer face-to-face, or they are on your website, reading your brochure or viewing your PowerPoint presentation either in person or online … you still have to know …

What do you say?

So ... What Are We Selling?

I bet you probably said "my products and services."  But is that really accurate - or is it perhaps more accurate to think along the lines of selling our reputations, our knowledge and experience, even if we're actually giving someone a product in exchange for their money?  Well think about it, you have competitors, we all do.  Some of us have more than others.  From a customer's point of view, they're all the same for the most part.  The customer doesn't care about you or your competitors past their research into which one of you (if any) they should choose.  The customer is focused on him or herself and gaining their own customers.  So, how do you prove to them you're not the same as your competitors, that you are the better choice?  You build your relationship with the customer first.  While your competitor is trying to sell product, you're getting acquainted.  You're building trust, you're being given more and more opportunities to show the customer, that they don't want your competitor, they want you. It's all about how you tell your story, how you prove to them that you and your product fulfill their needs.  It's all about proving to them you have knowledge and experience.  After all, without this experience of their needs or their industry; you couldn't have created this wonderful product that is sure to fulfill their needs.  How would you have known what your product needed to be if you didn't have that experience? The key take-away point here is ... stop focusing on your products and services.  Most companies make that mistake, they talk about themselves, the features of their products, what their services entail, how their software works.  Ok, at some point, this will be useful information to a potential customer ... eventually, but not up front.  Customers tend to respond best when they can learn something useful to their own businesses, get something up front (even if just helpful suggestions) and through this path of education and guidance, be led to the point of purchase, to the product information.  Think of how you think when you're researching a potential purchase.  You're like most of the potential customers in the world these days, you're savvy, you have questions, you want interaction and you really appreciate when you get helpful advice even without purchasing first.  If you didn't, you wouldn't have subscribed to this newsletter :).  Customers are more likely to choose you over your competitor because you were helpful, you educated them, informed them and not just about yourself and what you're selling, but about information that can really help them beyond what they can buy from you.  When your message speaks to the audience in a way that makes them think "oh yeah, that's me," then you've got them! And guess what ... while building this relationship with your audience ... you've proven to them that you really know what you're doing, that you're really and truly there for them, you understand them and their needs and how to deliver results ... ... you've turned your audience into your customers.

So, Let's Get Specific ... Sales & Marketing

As with each industry, there are differences in how each of the tools available to us are used, what the tools are, how they function, what they are called and so on.  In your business, you probably have your identity, brochure, website, business card and PowerPoint presentation to name a few pieces in your marketing blueprint.  If you don't - get them. But in the end, even if you have the most beautifully designed brochure, the most exciting FLASH driven website, the glitziest PowerPoint ... what's the point if they're not helping you sell your products and services? There are a few things that are very important.  You need to think of your sales, in my humble opinion, as building relationships.  Your customers are people, they have needs, wants, desires, fears.  You need to build a rapport with them, build trust at the same time you are generating awareness.  Today's customers are smart, they've been through the ringer a few times and they're not going to take any shenanigans lying down.  Focus on your relationship with the customer and you'll have a customer for life (so to speak). With that said, what tool is in your arsenal, that you can use to educate, inform, build a relationship, prove you know your stuff AND create something that will keep your target audience coming back for more, time and time again?  Have you considered regular email publications such as this one?  Better yet, how about Blogging!!!  There's even Twitter, the hottest new social interaction medium on the net today. Yes, they take some commitment, but the rewards for  companies who have embraced these technologies, are astronomical. But I digress a bit.  Before we can begin communicating with our audience, we need first to know what we're going to say and how, what sort of "face" we're going to put on our business ... our corporate identity.  We need to research how the customer thinks, feels, how they speak ... and prepare our content, perhaps multiple sets of it for different target audiences.  Without a plan, we're just shooting into a dark room with a shotgun, praying we'll hit something.

Let's Have Some Fun!

Yes, fun ... you went into business for yourself for a reason, whatever that reason may be, this should be an exciting endeavor, an adventure. 

The sales and marketing side of things can be just as much fun as going to a carnival or taking a vacation to that place you always wanted to go.  It's all in your mind-set.  Think of it like "Monopoly®."  You have your token, say the little horse with rider (my personal favorite), you move that token around the board buying up real estate left and right and collecting money from your opponents when they land on your properties. 

We all know the game.  The one with the most cash in the end wins ... well; business isn't so far off from that.  Where do you think the idea of the game came from in the first place?  Your "properties" are your customers and the pay you for your products and services as if they had just landed on your spot.  Watching the bank account grow, closing a deal, signing of the contract and the happy customer who speaks wonderful things about you and your business ... all provide a sense of achievement, gratification, and yes ... a win for you!

Why are you playing that game?  Maybe it's because your kids asked you to play with them, but admit it, you're having fun.  This shouldn't be all that much different!

Having people pay you money for your products and services, is just as heady as it is for say ... actors, when an audience applauds them at the close of the curtain!  In the same way this audience is telling these actors how appreciated they are, what a good job they did, how much their performance was valued; your customers are telling you that you are worthwhile, that your organization is good and that your products and services are worth spending their hard-earned money on - they are applauding you and giving you value.  The more you sell, the more the money comes in and the louder the "applause" becomes ... along with the volume of your audience at your "curtain call." 

The delightful challenge that faces you is "what can I say or do to get my audience, my customer, to applaud me ... to pay me for my products and services?"  This is actually a lot of fun! Well, to a marketer such as me perhaps, but if you put your own mind into this gear, you will find yourself invigorated and excited.  Planning and strategizing the success of your business is always an activity to be embraced with love and exuberance.

So let's get down to it ...

Congratulations, You Own Your Own Biz! Now What?

You have your own small business, congratulations and good for you! 

Now, what are you going to do with it?  What is your purpose? Your Goals? What is your branding position? Strategy? What is your corporate story? Identity? Why would customers buy from you? How are you going to sell your products or services? What are the tools in your sales and marketing arsenal? 

Just a few key questions that you need to take into consideration and all of them relate in, around, through and about your corporate identity.  The face of that identity is your first chance to make a good impression.  It's how you dress your business for success and it includes your logo, color scheme, graphics you use, layout of various key pieces of collateral like your website or corporate brochure.  But it should also include your message, how you tell your story, how you get your message in front of the right audience and how you close the sale.

Ok, so this is a book about design???  Actually, yes.  Sales and marketing planning should begin before you begin the design process.  It's embedded in everything that represents your business, every word, every graphic, every line ... each brochure, each page of your website ... it's a part of your identity.

So, if you're looking to hire a graphic artist to design your corporate identity, a programmer to develop your website ... ask yourself this ... "they're really great at what they do, but are they also business people?  Do they know how to create these mediums in a way that will help my business generate revenue, attain new clients or increase my visibility?" 

You may think to yourself "well that's my job" ... but is it?  You have a job, running your business, managing your employees, overseeing your products and services ... if you're a very small business, you may just be you.  Your clients hire you to do what you do best.  When you look for outside help, look for someone that does not add to your workload beyond the getting to know you and your needs phase.  Better yet, if you can find someone who empowers you to take charge of your identity in a way that saves you heaps of money ... kudos!!!

Back to Virtual B2B

Ok, so I remain enthused about this topic. On an earlier post I mentioned Virtual Trade Shows. These are web applications that companies are hosting specifically for creating trade shows. Some of their environments are really snazzy, some are just posts on a website, others, it works well, but the graphics are seriously lacking.

But what about using a medium that boasts an audience of millions to which you can market. A platform that has a ton of media watching closely for the keyword ... "SecondLife?"

That's right ... a "game" is one of the hot topics in the virtual world business arena, has been for the last 5 years or so with companies like Dell, IBM, Phillips and others flexing their virtual marketing muscles in game to touch this virtually addicted audience.

Dell for example, in 2006 announced their new 3 sim contribution to SecondLife (SL) where visitors would be able to build their new real world pc's virtually, make their purchase and have this new computer show up on their real world doorstep. In 2007, Dell announced how they were going to provide customer service on their products in SL.

Today, their sim's sit silent, a vast wasteland of prims and textures all focused on Dell. Why is that? Various articles on the net regarding this topic discuss how Dell did not use the medium the way SL's resident's want it. Meaning, they built an environment in game, that very much reflects the real world and websites. What residents really want is interaction, fun, freebies to enhance their virtual experience. These huge corporate giants invested a ton of money in trying to make it what they wanted it to be, as many companies do, without first understanding the community and what they were interested in.

So are there any success stories using SecondLife? You betcha, specifically for customers of one SL business woman who did not start out a marketer, but wanted to bring her love of SL to the real world. Her customers, IMAX, CoffeeMate, 1-800-Flowers and Colgate to name a few, have had great success with the money they've spent marketing to SL residents, specifically because of the interactive campaigns created with a firm understanding of the community and how the community wants to be "touched."

I discuss this more on David Meerman Scott's blog here: http://www.webinknow.com/2009/01/century-21-moves-tv-ad-spend-to-online-bev-thorne-cmo-tell-us-why.html#comments.

Online social environments are fascinating. There's blogging ... Twitter ... and SecondLife to name a few (a very few). So, how can you incorporate your business into these communities to leverage the power of their audiences? As with any marketing medium, first you need to understand the audience of that specific environment, you need a plan and you need an investment of time and attention, moreso than money for most of this is very inexpensive.

So what's this got to do with corporate identity and graphic design? Well, everything actually. As another post on this blog mentions, David Meerman Scott has already written about the blurring of the lines between PR and Marketing thanks to the online world. I believe it's more than that even ... graphic design, web design, corporate identity, messaging and branding, marketing, public relations ... they are all so interconnected because they are all the face of your business to the world be it virtual or real world.

Virtual communities are just another means of connecting with an audience, showing them your corporate face in a way they want to see it and getting your message across. Always put your best foot forward :)

Designing for Sales

You have your own business, congratulations and good for you! Now, what are you going to do with it? What is your purpose? your goals? What is your branding position? strategy? What is your corporate story? identty? Why would customers buy from you? How are you going to sell your products or services? What are the tools in your sales and marketing arsenal?

Just a few key questions that you need to take into consideration and all of them relate in, around, through and about your corporate identity. The face of that identity is your first chance to make a good impression. It's how you dress your business for success and it includes your logo, color scheme, graphics you use, layout of variou skey pieces of collateral like your website or corporate brochure. But how many realize that it really needs to also include your message, how you tell your story, how you gwet your message in front of the right audience and how you close the sale?

I'm reading this awesome book right now by David Meerman Scott called "The New Rules of Marketing & PR." You can check out his blog here: http://www.WebInkNow.com. I'm only just starting section II, but wow, how I'm enamored of this book. How it ties together so many things I'd been thinking yet unable to formulate completely into a solid plan of action or to use the right words. How right on the mark he is.

I would go further to suggest though, that the side of corporate identity that traditionally has been the domain of graphic artists, as well as the separate domain of web designers ... have further blurred the lines as David discusses in his book, to encompass all avenues of a business' identity. From the graphical to the website/web technology. From the message to the sales person (how product is sold). It's all so much more blurred than I think have been touched upon in his book.

So, is your graphic artist a web designer? is your web designer a business person? is your marketer a designer? is your designer a sales person? is your sales person a content writer? is your content writer a PR person? is your PR person a marketer ... it's all so circular thanks to the internet and the new rules!