Branding - One Small Business at a Time

Hi Nicholas. Welcome to Biznik. I'm curious: when you work with solopreneurs and small businesses, do you find that, before you work on designing their materials, they need some help understanding what exactly a personal brand is and how it can be used to develop a unique identity?

With our first company, a design and copywriting firm (which we still have), we found that small businesses needed so much more help than what they initially hired us for, which was online and print design. They hadn't identified what makes them unique, didn't know what a brand was, didn't know what their core marketing message was, etc.

Are you experiencing that, too?

Hi Nicolas! Great to see another design professional here on biznik. Welcome.

Hi Nicholas!

I have to echo Jeff's comment and also add that I am also working in the DC Metro area as a branding and identity design consultant for small business. If you are interested in collaboration, please contact me.

Best wishes!

Hi Nicholas. Welcome to Biznik. As Jeff said above, it's great to see another designer here! I am also working in the DC-Metro area, targeting small businesses. I find I am having a hard time convincing small businesses that their branding and marketing is an investment, not just another start-up cost. A lot of them think if they have a computer they can do their branding and design work on their own. Any advice on how to weed out the businesses with that mindset? I find myself getting caught up in too many meetings or phone conversations that don't go anywhere once an estimate is presented (and my prices are more than fair).

Hi, everyone. I'm an art director in Northern New Jersey. I've been running my own business for the past two years. I work mostly with small businesses. The biggest challenge with small business clients is that they don't always see the value of what you bring to the table. If you have the luxury of educating every single client from scratch, then it may be a worthwhile thing, but too often I get clients who want to lowball you or think they can do an equally good job using Word or Publisher. As a small business owner myself, I understand and appreciate that they want to conserve their financial resources, but if they are not willing to respect your fee, then I feel it's hard to give them 110% while I am struggling to pay the bills myself. I recently had a job where the client was burning so much of my time, that the fee I quoted them essentially nets me $8 per hour. That's no way to live! I'm thinking that in order to be profitable I need to explore alternative business models, like offering to customize pre-designed templates (see stocklayouts.com or pbmarketingservices.com), rather than doing everything from scratch all by myself. Unless you have staff, you really cannot effectively do everything from marketing, writing proposals, meeting with clients, doing the designs, bookkeeping, strategic planning, etc. all in 24 hours. I hate to say this, but sometimes a good template is just what a client needs. Your thoughts?

Hi Nicholas,

Welcome on board Biznik. Iam sure you will love spending time here on Biznik. Have a fruitful and productive networking time over here...

Best,

Anita CM

That is a great analogy, thanks! i may have to borrow that one, if you don't mind! I agree, it is hard to balance patience with perserverance...knowing when to keep pushing (without being pushy) and when to stop. i am a new business owner, so I'm still trying to work on this one as well!

I know that Judy (my partner/business partner) had commented, but thought I would chime in here. Having done design work for small businesses for 15 years, I can sympathize with the challenge. I have more war stories than I would wish to share.

What I have found out is over time you learn which clients are worth pursuing and which aren't. It's great to be able to educate them on the importance of branding, strong design, etc. but no matter what, you will find yourself sometimes having to beat them over the head without any results.

The one client I'm always weary of is when their very first question is "What will this cost?" or "What do you charge". Even before going into their needs.

I'm not trying to be pessimistic here, as by nature I am usually optimistic. All I can say is that we need to continue to see the "strong design" concept and find those clients who will appreciate the need for it.

Hang in there, get over the bumps, and you'll find the clients you want.

Nicholas:

I hope I didn't sound too jaded; I don't mean that you can't ever succeed in this field; a lot of professionals have. But this is a changing industry. We're facing increased competitions from all over the world and even the clients are also in competition with us. To those clients who want to do it themselves, I say: "let them." If they want $200 logos from a site that primarily offers printing or web hosting, that's what they'll get. It is just frustrating sometimes when you work so hard to put a decent proposal together to then hear the client say "well our budget is $X" who then proceeds to demand services worth $XYZ.

But when you encounter a client who's nothing but pure joy, who respects your expertise and who will sign the check without flinching, and who becomes a genuine friend in the end... well that makes all the hard work worthwhile. :)

Thanks for the encouragement.

I'm a regular reader of EarlyToRise.com. There are some good business ideas there. One of the things they and lots of other business consultants advocate is to have different "tiers" of services. For example, "basic" may be low- or no-cost, "intermediate" would be moderate cost, and "expert" would be high-end and high-cost. (Hey kind of like Biznik here!)

As applied to graphic design and creative services, the "basic" may entail free advice/articles on your blog and/or templates with modest customization. "Intermediate" might include more in-depth design development and further branding consultation. "Expert" would be all-out custom-tailored branding solution which hopefully garners huge fees.

I guess I'm trying to explore different models where different client needs can be met more efficiently. There are clients who only needs or can afford a "basic" treatment, and there are clients who deserves and will pay for "expert." I want to be in a place where each client gets what they need and can afford without me giving away the store. :)

The trick to selling your branded designs and brand image collateral is to have a vibrant brand expression and a philosophical perspective of your own that vividly communicates an impact . Brand is a process of excavating and exploiting your leading advantage. A lush brand has the power of persuasion to soothe consumer skepticism by delivering a value that they can tangibly identify with. Brand relevance operates ahead of the curve and gives your customer something so unique and personal that they can’t imagine forging ahead without it and can’t stop talking about in the meantime. A question to challenge yourself with is how are you intensifying the relationship between your would-be customer and your company, distinguishing your brand from the rest of the brand designing competition? If you are talking to companies that don’t appreciate positioning their businesses for distinction; then I suspect that you are talking to companies that aren’t offering a product or service of exceptional distinction. In which case you are strategically aligning your brand to their bland brand...is the association valuable or more costly? Brand isn’t ‘experienced’ through an icon; brand is not enlivened through a colorful logo or a zippy tag line at the small start, no matter where it’s splashed. To some degree you might be trying to coerce this small business community to commit to a polished level of appearance that they can’t deliver in experience. Merely disappointing more customers than not. And if the matter is purely economical for a small company…I think that offering a no-cost or low cost template is a brilliant strategy. Offer 5 different free templates absolutely free to companies within a specified size or volume, offer a few modest paper choices at a reasonable price. Treat that company like royalty, as if they were your best customer every time that you see them. That small company will refer your services to others; hence, you might get a great deal of business as a result. Imagine that the small company becomes a big company…they are of course going to be loyal to you who supported them in their humble beginnings sharing their success with you in the form of creative work. But more importantly you are contributing to your community in a small way. Brand lives fully within the five senses of every would-be loyal customer just wishing that they could connect with an organization that functioned out of a genuine sense of purpose, communicated a perspective they can relate to, an attitude that connects them, in a voice that speaks to them, with an edge that they hope they have too, now that they just did business with you.

And finally, decide who you want to work with based on the relative size of the buying pie. If this small business corps isn’t generating what you need to sustain your efforts then embark upon a rigorous analysis of the design landscape; assess your competition to determine who is and who isn’t being served…and then go get’em. Best of Luck!