The extended project I’ve been working on is starting to wind down, so after an extended hiatus I’m looking for new clients.
To get right to the point, I’m able to do everything from marketing analysis and planning all the way through implementing identity programs, integrated ad campaigns, and new product launches. I may not write my own JavaScript™ or run a printing press, but I can do a wider range of work — at a higher level — than almost anybody else. That’s not bravado — cruise through this website and check out my real world experience.
The website for Western New York Energy is now live. It’s probably the hundredth website I’ve done since 1995. It is real simple and built so that the client can post and edit news, job listings, and photos from a web browser interface.
From here on out, I am no longer designing and coding websites as individual, stand-alone projects. I will continue to provide creative direction, writing, and marketing consulting services. I’ll continue to specify and manage freelance web developers and designers. But I’m not writing code from scratch myself and it would be wrong to represent otherwise.
Don’t misunderstand… I consider the web a vital part of any marketing program, and I keep abreast of what is going on. But when an inexpensive freelancer (from down the street or off in the third-world) can do the grunt work for a fraction of my price, it seems absurd for me to blow my client’s budget on my inefficient attempts at geekery. So I will gladly consult and project manage freelance or inhouse geeks, yours or mine, remote or local… but I’m not mucking with the code myself.
Occasionally I might do a one-page website from scratch for a small business (and I believe that many small businesses need ~only~ a single page website!)
I am proud of this one. It is done the way it should be — nothing more, nothing less. It is a nearly perfect model for other small- to medium-sized, mature business-to-business companies that sell larger projects (i.e. not widgets). Its purpose is to enhance Allied Builders’ credibility and to provide potential clients with easy access to important contact and qualification information.
Click to visit Allied Builders
This redesigned site is easy to find and navigate. It performs well in search engines. It’s easy to maintain, update, and modify. It looks professional instead of gaudy. It’s accessible to people with small screens, alternative devices, and disabilities. Its code is lean and it validates properly. The photos are crisp and the colors stand out. And it works properly with every modern web browser and computer platform (and it will continue to do so for years to come.)
In other words, it follows my web design philosophy.
I didn’t just redo their website. I found new potential clients and opportunities through my connections and networking. I also created a response package of print materials and wrote their long-term marketing plan. I wrestled their corporate identity into submission and made every element more consistent and professional looking. Plus I wrote the copy, made the photos, and designed the website’s architecture and pages. Michael Barrish helped me with the set-up and coding (thanks!) while I did the final production work and testing.
Everything cost less than you might think.
Enough bragging. How about giving me a crack at your next marketing project?
Isn’t wireless networking great at eliminating clutter?
This photo shows most of the gear needed to produce high quality creative advertising and marketing work. Using these inexpensive tools, I can plan, write, design, illustrate, and deliver complex, integrated projects to clients all over the world. By working online, I can collaborate with almost anyone while my clients can review my work-in-progress at their convenience.
This workflow eliminates the go-betweens (account execs, project managers, traffic coordinators) and reduces overhead — when compared to a traditional ad agency — by an order of magnitude.
Of course, the downside to all of this is the lack of one-on-one contact. But who says that working this way precludes human contact? More than anything else, this workflow frees me up for better quality, more direct interactions.
After working on my own, the novelty of getting “on the road” makes me more productive. Boring hotels are great for writing. Travel is great for brainstorming. So go ahead, make my day, send me that ticket to Des Moines.
I’ve decided that there is no point in designing websites unless I can help develop the architecture and content too. My strong suit is not in website design per se, but in delivering the entire package. There is little reward in designing an elegant interface and then having the pages be populated with generic photos and banal copy. Besides, if you want a cheap website, you’re better off buying a template or hiring an Indian or Russian for $5 per hour.
The central theme to my positioning is that my clients decide to work with me because of value, not price. My key argument is that doing high quality work leads to better results. And part of delivering a “high quality” project is scaling it responsibly and realistically — its budget should make sense when compared to its expected return.
Recently I have begun to include a simple “ballpark” analysis of the return on the marketing investment into my proposals. It’s imprecise, for obvious reasons, but it does put the numbers into perspective. For practice I used my 20-20 hindsight to measure how some of my previous jobs performed. What is scary is how many clients made their marketing decisions based on emotional responses rather than “running the numbers.”
Most of my free proposals are 8- to 16-pages long, with a preliminary marketing analysis, ROI discussion, and long-term roadmap with realistic numbers.
Early in my career, an small dental lab (which will remain nameless) had a CEO who fell in love with a stationery sample from my paper supplier. He wanted everything high end: expensive paper, six coats of metallic inks, varnishes, die cuts, and custom watermarks. In the end his stationery cost over $20,000 (I took $1,500 as a design fee — the rest was spent on production.) The client was thrilled with his company’s new look. The printer got an award and I got a sexy portfolio piece. But potential clients were less impressed — they were scared off because the stationery looked too expensive and over the top.
Contrast this with the advice I now give my clients: Buy very high quality business cards on heavy card stock — not those $35 Quick Print cards — because everyone you meet forms a “first impression” from the design and heft of your card. Your business cards are at least as important as the suit you might wear. But bypass the expense of using printed stationery. Instead, have stationery templates professionally designed and print your letters with a decent color printer.
Take the money you save from not printing stationery and use it to buy professional fonts (i.e. not Times or Arial). Get training and learn how to use the simple page layout capabilities of your word processing software so you can incorporate proper typesetting and photos. Furthermore, if you invest in a photo library — placed on your network server — you can incorporate your existing professional quality photos into your regular business letters.
Indeed this approach verges into “Print-On-Demand” territory because you can now “cut-and-paste” your brochure and catalog content directly into a custom, personalized letter. You can dramatically reduce the amount of print materials — catalogs, sell sheets, flyers, brochures — that you need to maintain. Heck, if your customers are internet savvy you can bypass printing (and mailing) altogether and email a PDF complete with live hyperlinks and multimedia. Take the savings and spend it on a super nice capabilities brochure, website, or an ad campaign. Or put it in your pocket (if you own the place, that is…)
Let’s see — nice business cards for your team, a case of the best Crane’s cotton rag paper, a new color printer or two, a larger hard drive for the server, some training and inexpensive software. All of this would cost far less than $20,000 while delivering a greater ROI than fancy stationery alone.
What I am really talking about isn’t stationery at all. I’m talking about making a cultural shift within your company. It means hiring brighter, better skilled people — that cost more — even at the lowest level. It means investing in ideas, planning, design, and training rather than ordering another year’s supply of sales literature. And it’s about focusing on what your customer sees — as a total package — coming out from your company.
A small sampling of the naming, logos, and identities I’ve developed.
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