The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

Location, location…

Well, the results are in. You know, for THAT proposal, the one I stayed up all night working on. No, I seriously didn't do that (this time -- I've learned my lesson), but still, I got my hopes up. A lot. More than I had realized. And then the e-mail bomb dropped:
 
            "After my senior staff reviewed all of the proposals, they have decided to go a different direction for (project name).
            I believe your proposal was a good introduction to my team and they will be in contact with you about future projects.
            If you are ever in (city name) please let me know because I would love to set up an in-person meeting."
 
So, I didn't get the gig, and I was soooo right for it. They are right, square in the middle of my target market. A perfect fit. So, what happened? He sounds like he still likes me, and the fact that he notified me right away means there is some respect there for me as a human being. And, he's talking about the future, so I'm going to assume he's telling the truth and all hope is not lost.
 
After my stomach stopped turning, I wrote him back, thanking him for his time and for being conscientious enough to let me know so quickly. And then I asked him, point blank, why they didn't choose me. This is something I have never done in the past, and I am so glad I followed Ilise's advice on this, because I received VERY valuable information. I'm just not sure what to do with it at this point.
 
I received an IMMEDIATE email response. Their decision had to do with money and location. They chose to go with a firm located the next state over, which means whenever they have meetings, that firm's trip is only a train ride away, compared to my having to fly, with hotel accommodations and a food allowance.
 
I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with this one, especially since travel was never mentioned prior to the proposal. If I had known this were an issue, I would have addressed it in the proposal. Lesson learned! Long-distance solutions can become part of my proposal strategy for out-of-towners. But how to do that? That will take some creative thinking.
 
It certainly makes sense that long distance relationships take more time to develop and mature, and it makes sense to me why they would choose a firm that is closer in proximity.
 
Anyone have any similar experiences? What strategies do you have in place to handle long-distance relationship building with prospects who believe the best way to work is in person, face-to-face?

PAMELA SAXON helps those in arts and entertainment visually express themselves through integrated marketing, as well as helping them to get organized in their social media efforts. You can find her on Twitter, and on Facebook, or sign up for her newsletter here: www.saxondesign.com.

Can you ask your client?

Intro from Ilise: We spend a lot of time talking about what clients like, but the best source of this information is the client themselves. Today, Di Lohr from Adunate (who is a member of my Advanced Marketing Group) shares an experience where she learned what her client likes in a proposal—and more—directly from the client… Her client also markets services through proposals, so she had even more insight to share. Either way, the client perspective can teach us so much about how we present ourselves, and how we can approach them in a way that will get us the job. Here is what Di had to share:

After discussing her project, I then asked my client about her thoughts on the working agreement I had sent her. I wanted to know how it would fit into her industry, since with my previous clients I had never submitted proposals.

She was very forthcoming, which I appreciated, and said her first inclination was to feel put off. My list of "rules and regulations" (on the second page of my working agreement) made her feel like "whoa...this is cut and dry, and no room for discussion."

We then discussed her method of proposal writing, and when she includes those final working terms (she facilitates historical preservation by collaborating with architects, engineers and contractors).

1. She writes a proposal that includes what she will do for them, the phases of the project, time for each phase and cost involved. She also includes her very basic assumptions, like she will get paid a very ballpark XXX to do this project.
2. She and the client meet to go over the proposal and discuss necessary changes and a more refined price quote. She said in her line of work there are always many changes, discussions of contractors, time frames, etc.)
3. When all proposal terms are agreed upon, she rewrites the proposal and then includes her working terms of agreement. She goes after their signature with this final proposal.

To all of you, I ask: Is this a similar process for designers?

I feel the conversation with this client was very helpful. She is talkative and willing to take the time, to which I expressed my great appreciation. I also asked her if I could periodically consult with her as I approach more projects in this industry. She thought that was a super idea.

Do you have a client you can ask for their honest feedback? Go for it.

Diahann Lohr, from Adunate Word & Design, unites words and design for all your communication needs.

 

How to manage projects, virtual teams AND still have time to do your own creative work - Part 2

In yesterday's Part 1, Justine shared advice on finding the right team and creating a project blueprint. Now, here's part 2:

3) Relinquish some control
I know this is hard, but one of the biggest bottlenecks to productivity is setting up a system where everything goes through you. As much as you try, you can’t be available to everyone all the time and if you’re busy with something else, the project will grind to a halt while your team waits for your feedback/direction.  Encourage your team to address questions/issues to one another directly and cc you.  That way you can monitor the project and only get involved only necessary.

 
4) Get organized
Tools that help you manage projects run the gamut from a note book to software systems that let you create projects and link them to contacts, appointments, emails, etc. (I use Daylite by Merchant Circle), What’s right for you depends on upon how many projects you’re running at once, how complex they are and how good your organizations skills are, but the project management must haves are:
• a dedicated project folder
• a project blueprint
• a written timeline (including client due dates for feedback) tacked to a bulleting board in front of you.
• daily ‘to-do ‘list (separated into priorities and non urgent)
• transcribed notes from meetings and calls
• reference/research material

5) Plan your time before your day starts
When you’ve got lots of plates spinning at the same time, it’s very easy to slip into a reactionary work mode.  When we allow ourselves to be at the mercy of the never-ending stream of requests, we get
off-track, our productivity takes a nose-dive and we end up feeling frustrated. I break my day into blocks of time and while I don’t always stick to it (is anyone else guilty of thinking they can do way more in an hour than they really can?), it does give me a frame of reference.  What I don’t achieve goes on my ‘to-do’ list for the next day.

Each person is different and my approach has been developed through trial and error.  The most important this is that you have a system. If you focus on the 3 key objectives: (1) building the right team (2) creating a project management system (3) managing your time, you’ll find a system that works for you.

Justine Clay is the founder of Pitch Perfect and teaches creative talent and entrepreneurs the business, interpersonal and project management skills they need to transform their creative ideas into paying projects and lasting professional relationships. To sign up for her newsletter, or learn more about upcoming workshops, please visit www.pitchperfectpresentation.com.

 

How to manage projects, virtual teams AND still have time to do your own creative work - Part 1

There are many reasons for creative talent to take the plunge and go out on their own, and from my experience of managing freelance talent - creative freedom ranks high on the list.  But managing projects, overseeing virtual creative teams, and dealing with client requests often means they end up doing everything BUT the creative work.

Getting bogged down with managing multiple projects can leave you frustrated and tapped-out. So how do you carve out the time do your own creative work, while keeping your project and team on track?  Here are 5 suggestions:

1) Find the right team
Putting together the right team can make all the difference between a smooth running project and one that’s a nightmare to manage.  Start by defining your role (based upon your strengths) at the beginning of the project and recruit team members that compliment your skill set, work style and personality.  For example if you’re more of a big-picture creative, consider bringing a detail oriented designer or assistant on board.

2) Create a Project Blueprint
Your Project Blueprint will be your roadmap and taking the time at the start of the project will go a long way to ensuring it runs smoothly.  It should contain the following:

- Creative objective
- Deliverables
- Project scope
- Outline of phases
- Timeline

Schedule a meeting with your entire creative team (or conference call if you’re not if you’re in the same city) and get each member to contribute to creating the Project Blueprint. This process should ultimately result in each person verbally accepting their role and responsibilities to the group and project. This will engage the team, firmly establish who’s doing what and act as an incentive for each to deliver what they said they would. E-mail the Project Blueprint to the entire team afterwards.

For Justine's 3 other suggestions, stay tuned for Part 2 of "How to manage projects, virtual teams AND still have time to do your own creative work."

Justine Clay is the founder of Pitch Perfect and teaches creative talent and entrepreneurs the business, interpersonal and project management skills they need to transform their creative ideas into paying projects and lasting professional relationships. To sign up for her newsletter, or learn more about upcoming workshops, please visit www.pitchperfectpresentation.com

 

Time offline = More time?

In a January 2010 Marketing Mix blog post, Peleg Top wrote about having Intentions instead of “making resolutions.” It sounded like a good idea, so I set myself a handful of Intentions for 2010, including having one weekend day completely free from work every week and a work-free weekend every month.

Having that Intention made me see that the business-oriented online activities I did during working hours - reading and posting to industry blogs, following comments, researching, writing & responding to emails - always seemed to take more time than I planned or wanted to spend.

I came up with three things I could do differently to make better use of my work-week time online:

• I cut way back on visits to the Virtual Water Cooler. Except for targeted blogs in areas I’m pursuing, I stopped reading all but 4 business blogs and post only very occasionally. I miss the “social networking,” but it’s a ton of time saved.
• I keep a list of things I need to do online, and log on once or twice a day to do them. Otherwise, I’m offline. News flashes and the inbox can wait a few hours.
• Unless email is the only sensible option, I make phone calls instead. They’re faster! Mostly I leave voicemails. Sometimes the person answers and we talk. Old school? Maybe, but it works. And people seem to like it.

These changes were essentially painless, or pleasant. I got the free time on weekends I hoped for. Plus “extra” time during the week to finish regular work and actually get to several of the “Would be great!” items that had been languishing at the bottom of my to-do list for months.

Peleg, you were right - Intentions are better than resolutions. Thank you!

Special thanks to Patrice Robertie of Acorn Advertising in Arlington, MA.

How to avoid being a bad KISSer

In our quest to KISS, you know "Keep it simple, stupid." do you think it's possible to keep it too simple? In one of my recent email blasts, "Beware the KISS of death," I wrote about good KISSing form. Today, my focus is the bad. Yes. Bad KISSing. I see it all the time. Just the other day, I found the three examples. They were so simple that I almost missed them - and that right there is the problem.

You see, in marketing communications, simple and predictable often translates to "dismissible," i.e., something readers can scan and ignore in order to save time. But that's the exact opposite of our job as marketers. Our role is to make people think and remember our product or service, right?

That leads me to the hidden downsides of "keeping it simple." Chief among them is that you risk wasting your budget and effort on prospects who are ignoring you. And in the long term, you can erode your brand's relevance by being simply uninteresting.

In the interest of helping you avoid becoming a bad KISSer, I'm happy to provide you with my list of ways that marketers often "keep it simple" incorrectly:

• Becoming overly-fixated on word count. If it's engaging, readers are just as likely to read 20 words as 2.
• Opting for simple Jargon, those oh-so-convenient words that everyone in the industry uses so much that they are meaningless. "Value-engineered" is one of my favorites. Sure, they're concise and easy. But you use them at the sacrifice of saying something memorable or meaningful. Right?
• "Dumbing down" to the level of a 12 year-old or whatever year-old. People hate being talked down to. It's a simple truth.
• Using line-item lists of features that have been cut and pasted-in verbatim from some other piece of communication. Look at the context (website? brochure? newspaper ad?) and customize the copy.
• Believing in magic solutions. For example, one or two words that say everything, offend no one, and work no matter what. They rarely exist. When you find one, it's usually jargon (see above.)
• Lastly, beware the ideas that gain the greatest consensus around the office. Opting for the lowest common denominator gives you the lowest risk-but it also gives you the lowest opportunity for extraordinary success. Some good ideas just can't gain a quorum.

In our business, keeping it simple doesn't always guarantee success. You have to look at the whole picture. And when that's not enough, it helps to have another option in your backpocket.

 For more tips like this, sign up to receive Conrad’s newsletter “a little something from backpocket copywriter” at www.backpocketcopywriter.com/tips.htm.

Teaching pigs to sing... NOT!

Robert Heinlein said: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." I just love that.

What this means to me is that there are times when you just can't reach certain people. You can shout 'til you're blue in the face, but that pig is never going to sing!

Recently, I had a prospect who didn't start out as a pig, but in the end definitely leaned towards "oink." The conversation went something like this:

PROSPECT: I just have a few questions about your proposal. Why should you get so much money when Budget Web Design charges a lot less?

ME: That's a fair question. Let's start by making sure we're comparing apples to apples. At Saxon Design, we produce original design, created especially for you. No off-the-shelf template design here! And, our professional copywriters  produce stellar marketing copy. They will optimize your site for the search engines AND write for human  beings! We bring a one-on-one human touch to you from start to finish.

PROSPECT: Hmph. People don't care about design, they just want to get the information they are looking for. Plus, I have some copy from my old website that you can just cut and paste, so I think you're just trying to screw me out of my money.

GRRRR. Not only does this guy have no understanding of what goes into professional design but also has a blatant and total disregard everything we stand for. What kind of an idiot is he anyway, to think that none of this matters?

PROSPECT: BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH... so it's just not worth that much money.

ME (exercising obvious self-control): I see that you and I may not value marketing, design and customer service in the same way, so here is what I WILL do for you, now that I know what your budget is...

I prepared a VERY QUICK revised proposal and washed my hands of it. I could have argued for design and tried to bring him over to my side, but I didn't. In retrospect, the most important thing I did was not only control my tongue, but I also let it go. I JUST COMPLETELY LET IT GO. As a matter of fact, I let it go so much that I didn't even complain to my husband about it at dinner that night! Did I end up getting the gig? No, I didn't. And I was deeply relieved.

It's easy to be pulled into negative situations where we start questioning the validity of our services or our pricing structure, and start to wonder whether our time and talents are really worth all that. But being pulled in to that argument is just a waste of our own, VERY VALUABLE time and energy, when there are prospects waiting out there who DO share in our values.

Life is expensive and time is your greatest resource. Are the pigs really worth it?

What are your experiences with pig-singing? Do you have any stories you'd like to share?

PAMELA SAXON helps those in arts and entertainment visually express themselves through integrated marketing, as well as helping them to get organized in their social media efforts. You can find her on Twitter, and on Facebook, or sign up for her newsletter here: www.saxondesign.com.

Read about Pam's journey to become a conference speaker and listen to her interview about how direct outreach has increased her business by 240%.

How to grow a virtual agency

In my Marketing Mentor Advanced Marketing Group, we recently had a guest speaker, Heathere Evans-Keenan of Keenan PR, who discussed the notion of running a virtual agency.

The topic (of growing virtual agencies) originally arose because all of us in the Marketing Mentor group recognize the need to grow our agencies beyond ourselves, but do not want – for a myriad of reasons – to run a traditional brick-and-mortar agency with employees, workstations, and all that this entails. What is the next step once we have too much work to do ourselves? Heathere coached us to:

1. Identify our services range and where we want to grow.
Beyond graphic design, this can include social media, web & software development, brand strategy, full-service marketing, public & media relations, and more.

2. Identify our preferred partners/subcontractors within that list of new offerings.
How do we find good people? She suggests we strive to keep our network alive – these are people we know or once knew, and people we meet. Surround ourselves with those we know and trust. Keep tabs on good people we knew from the past. For instance, I just recently became re-connected with a woman I worked with years ago on a website project, an excellent new media consultant. This took place through LinkedIn, when she saw and responded to a tweet I posted on Twitter – since my tweets get funneled to LI as ‘updates’. Social media makes this easier than ever before.

But what if we need a person in a field of expertise we are not that familiar with? This is riskier. Heathere advises we reach out to local and national networking/membership groups, like the PR Society of America, the PR equivalent of our professional organization, American Institute of Graphic Arts. Top contributors in any field are members of these kinds of professional groups. A lot of the effort is just talking with people – but we’ll find that word gets around.

3. Position our firms.
Define ourselves. Proudly and unapologetically use the term “virtual firm” (or as they say at thebauhub.com, a variation on the creative agency model, “Your global collective of senior creative minds”). The benefits are manifold:

Exactly What to Say on the Phone: Part 2

Yesterday, I talked about exactly what I say when reaching out to prospects during “prospecting hour.”

Today, I would like to share a few important tips I’ve learned along the way:

1: Your script doesn't have to be perfect the first time. Try out the initial version you come up with, call ten prospects, and see how it feels. If something sounds awkward when you say it, tweak the script before your next call or phone session.

2: You're not married to the script. If the call is going in a different direction from your carefully-structured pattern, go with it. It's also okay for you to change a word or two as you go...I find that my script sounds a little bit different each time. You can always work your way back to the talking points in your script later in the call. The script is just a tool to help you start the conversation.

3: Take a tip from the voice-over industry: try not to sound like you're reading a script. Imagine that you're having a casual conversation with a friend who has a need that you can provide the answer to (because if you're doing it right, that's what your relationship with this person will eventually be). I struggle with sounding natural...a lot of the time I feel like "Mr. Announcer" once I've launched into my spiel. You can train yourself to sound more natural by practicing with a friend, or by recording your voice as you test-drive the script. If you sound stilted or fake when you play the recording back, make adjustments so that you sound more like your natural self.

If you want to get back on the marketing "wagon" in a big way, I hear the new Marketing Mentor eCalendar is going to knock your socks off, laying out your marketing tasks (like prospecting hour) and integrating them right into your electronic calendar. I’ve been using the "Start Anytime" which I can highly recommend. (And no, Ilise didn't pay me to mention it.)

Here's one final resource for you--an online "cold calling tool" that has responses for nearly every objection you're likely to encounter. Use it as designed or as inspiration for writing your script: http://www.bnet.com/blog/salesmachine/the-ultimate-cold-calling-tool/2449?pg=1

Special thanks to Tom N. Tumbusch, who writes copy for green businesses and creative agencies. Learn more about him at http://www.wordstreamcopy.com/.

And be sure to sign up for the free webcast on November 1st, Start NOW: Your 2011 Marketing Plan.

Exactly What to Say on the Phone: Part 1

On Monday, October 25th, we are going to introduce the new 2011 Marketing Mentor eCalendar, which will merge with your calendar software to keep you on track with your marketing tasks. If you were following it today, it would remind you of these daily tasks:

• Prospecting Hour
• Social Networking

Today, Tom Tumbusch is going to share exactly what he says during prospecting hour, and tomorrow, he is going to share some helpful tips for making it your own. Ready?

Right now, when I do my prospecting (or research calling), I'm using a script that's based on the one found in Marketing Mentor Marketing Plan + Calendar, plus a bit of personalization. It goes something like this:

"Hi, this is Tom Tumbusch from WordStreamCopy. You don't know me, but I recently saw your work featured (name a specific place: in a book/news story/on their website). Have I caught you at a good time?"

Yes: "I work with creative agencies like yours to write copy for green companies, and I'd love to get on your radar should a need arise. Do you ever have a need for outside copywriters?"

The conversation proceeds from there. At the end of the call, whether or not there's an immediate need, I ask if I can add the contact to my monthly e-mail list. It still surprises me how often they say yes, and I'm finding that makes my follow-up calls go much more smoothly when I call back a few months later. Last week, a prospect who I've been in contact with for a year told me how much he enjoyed my newsletter, and he actually apologized that he hadn't sent me any work yet! (And here I was worried about being a pest.)

I also have a similar version of the script specifically for voice mail messages, which account for a large percentage of the calls you'll make (Martha Retallick says it's about 80%, and I've had much the same experience.) I actually get some response from voicemails, sometimes by email.

Stay tuned tomorrow for my thoughts on perfection, script-marriage, being Mr. Announcer, and how to respond to objections.

Special thanks to Tom N. Tumbusch, who writes copy for green businesses and creative agencies. Learn more about him at http://www.wordstreamcopy.com/.

And be sure to sign up for the free webcast on November 1st, Start NOW: Your 2011 Marketing Plan.