CWI Media, LLC
By Donna Cope
Can you imagine getting ready to take a several-day long road trip and not taking along a map or GPS? You may eventually get there, but without direction, the trip is going to take much longer and you may never even reach your destination.
Now imagine you are going to buy a house. You find a real estate agent and tell them you want to buy a three bedroom house, but that’s it. Without giving the agent further direction (i.e. location, lot size, type of home, etc.), the agent is going to have a hard time finding what you are looking for (if they will be able to at all) and it will take much longer. Most people understand this and wouldn’t send an agent out without giving them direction.
The same principle applies when creating marketing materials, graphic design projects and web sites. The project can take several days, even weeks, but without direction from the client; the project will take much longer and may not end up being exactly what the client had envisioned. Just as directions are important when you are traveling, important to give to your real estate agent and important to give to any other person you hire to assist you in your personal life or business, directions are vital when hiring someone to assist you with your marketing projects. Directions save you time and money.
It’s not realistic to tell your graphic or web designer, “I sell cookies, please make me a cookie logo and a web site about cookies.” Then expect to have a fabulous logo and web site three days later. To get exactly what you are looking for, you’ll need to supply some direction. For example, how many pages do you need your web site to be? Will you need hosting? Are you planning to sell your cookies from your web site? Do you want your logo to have a more contemporary look or something more traditional? Are there any colors you want to use or avoid using?
No matter how talented or qualified your marketing professional is, no one can create your perfect marketing materials without a little direction from you. Try to have an idea of what you want to accomplish with your marketing project, what you like or don’t like, what your budget is, etc. prior to hiring someone. It will definitely save you time and money in the long run!
By Donna Cope
I was just thinking about how much time changes things. We all know the effects time has on us in everyday life. Be it your memory, that extra little ache you may feel in the morning that you didn’t feel a few years ago, or that (gasp!) gray hair that has seemed to pop up overnight.
Time doesn’t just effect how we feel or look. It also has effects on how we think and get things accomplished. Take the phone book, for example. Ten years ago, if I needed anything from a plumber to a doctor to someone to bring me a hot meal, I’d go right to the phone book. Today, I looked under my phone table and found two phone books from the last two years that are still in their plastic wrap and have never even been opened. At first I started thinking about what a waste of paper. Think about all the poor trees that were cut down so that my phone books could collect dust (which made me realize that ten years ago, I never would have thought that much about the environment, either). Then I realized that, like me, phone books are suffering the effects of time. I wonder how long it will be until they no longer exist in paper format? Most people today just look things up on their computer or cell phone. I know I do. I hope that everyone who has an ad in the phone book has also invested advertising in other mediums. If you haven’t, I can just about guarantee you are not getting the most from your advertising dollars. I’m not saying don’t advertise in the phone book, I’m saying make sure you advertise in several different places in order to get the most bang for your buck. By just sticking to print, you are missing all of those who do research online and vice-versa.
Another advertising medium that has suffered the effects of time is newspaper advertising. In today’s online and environmentally friendly world, most forms of print advertising are on the decline. Again, if you only do print advertising, you are missing a large number of potential clients. Review your marketing, make sure you are keeping up with the times and spread your marketing out among several different mediums such as the web, television and radio. Just think, 10 or so years ago many small businesses and professionals couldn’t have imagined the importance of having a web site or blog and now they couldn’t imagine going without it. Stay on top of the trends, only time will tell what the best advertising medium will be for you 10 years from now.
