As of the tasks and lectures I felt that I took in a lot of what was said in the lectures and hopefully that would have shown in the tasks. I tried to do all the tasks straight after the relevant lectures so that it is all in my head and I found that it was really helpful. Some of the tasks I found quite hard to understand. For example , the second task, I wasn't sure whether I was suppose to find potential clients who are seeking Graphic Designers or Graphic design companies that are hiring. I thought that I should do the one that is most relevant and appropriate to me andI decided to analyse my potential employers who would be Graphic Design studios. Overall I think I spent a susbtantial amount of time doing each tasks and tried to show my understanding of each lecture. I believe that I completely them to the best of my ability , however good that will be.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Enterprise Evaluation
To evaluate the overall module I think that our group succeeded in delivering our presentation to the standard that we were all satisfied with. We were all very committed in trying to answer all the necessary questions in order to perfect out business plan and I think we did quite well in our attempt to do that. We were quite organised in terms of meeting up with the group even during the holidays ( we had Skype meetings). Each member of the group were assigned quite specific tasks to complete for each meeting which allowed us to easily work out where we are and what we need to do interms of our progression in the business plan. However, I think at the beginning we got quite carried away with the really detailed stuff that weren't necessary for our presentation such as the pricing of everything, all the legal stuff, pricing for printers etc. They didn't seem to be necessary and would have made our presentation far too long but I think it was still a good thing that we considered those factors and blogged them. As a group I think we all worked together quite well I felt that we all had the same vision and were all on the same levels of understand ( apart from the finance section as I really didn't understand what that all about, not that I didn't try . As mentioned, we were all assigned specific roles. Ailsa was in charged of all the finacnes, Robyn with all the premises, SWOT analysis and competitors, Nick was in charged of all the legal stuff, branding and I was in charge with researching the printers them and also the promotion and marketing side of things. But I felt like I didn't have as much to do as the others and perhaps could have tried to get more involved with all the other stuff.
Promoting our Graphic Design Business
There are many ways to promote a graphic design business, including blogging, word-of-mouth, email newsletters and social networking. Many of these methods are inexpensive or free, and can lead to increased exposure for your business and new clients. Even when a design business is extremely busy, it is important to continue to market your work, and many of these approaches can become a part of your everyday workflow.
Promote Your Graphic Design Business with Online Interviews
Getting interviewed for a website is a great way to promote your graphic design business. Online interviews will expose your business to a larger audience and drive traffic to your website. While it would be great if websites came to you for interviews, this will not always be the case. At any point in your design career, you have to self-promote. This can be as simple as contacting a website and asking if they are interested in an interview or case study on your company.
How to Use Twitter for Business
Twitter is a powerful and widely used networking tool, and among other communities, it is very popular among designers and web professionals. While many think it is just for announcing day-to-day social activities, there are many ways to harness Twitter for your graphic design business.
Using Facebook to Promote Your Graphic Design Business
Facebook is enormously popular, most often thought of as a social tool for friends and family to share photos, thoughts and anything else that the huge Facebook network allows. It is also, however, a powerful business tool. With so many people on one website, it was inevitable that businesses jumped in with profiles, or pages, of their own and by taking advantage of other business opportunities.
Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Graphic Design Business
LinkedIn is a business networking website that allows professionals to connect and help each other. Unlike many other networking tools that were originally geared towards socializing, LinkedIn is specifically for business networking and therefore an obvious choice as a tool to market yourself as a graphic designer.
How to Create an Email Newsletter
An email newsletter is an important tool for growing a graphic design business. It is one of most effective ways to spread the word-of-mouth on what type of work you are doing and looking for. Here’s what it takes to create and maintain one.
The Benefits of a Graphic Design Blog
There are many benefits to writing your own graphic design blog. Writing a blog can build a community around your website, promote your business, and help to establish yourself as an expert in the field.
How to Design a Graphic Design Business Card
Whether you are a freelancer or you own your own design firm, it is crucial to have business cards for your graphic design business. First we are going to look at the advantages of having a card, and then move on to the decisions that have to be made and the actual design process.
Five Ways to Improve Your Graphic Design Business
There are many ways to improve your graphic design business. Some of the most obvious ways include building your portfolio and improving your skill set through practice or courses. However, there are additional improvements you can make to your business that don't involve design work. These include anything from how you dress to how you write.
Interview: Social Networking in a Design Business
Social media really expands your ability to connect with like-minded groups, especially Twitter. Not only is Twitter useful to broadcast and interact, it’s also incredibly useful to research prospective clients, learn more about potential employees and watch what your competition is up to.
How and Why to Get your Credit Line on Graphic Design Projects
Getting your graphic design credit line on your work is a great way to spread word-of-mouth on your business. It is satisfying, and lucrative, when someone sees your work and contacts you for a project. In many cases your clients would pass on your contact info for you in case of an inquiry, but it is a great idea to skip that step and guarantee people can get in touch with you. Also, it is of course nice to get credit when it is deserved and see your name on a final work of design-
Script
Slide 1- Roles/ Introduction
Firstly, I would like to introduce all the members of our Company. First, we have Nick Lovegrove who is the Creative Directo, Ailsa Marrs, the Financial Director and designer, Robyn who is the accounts manager and me, the print liaison and designer
We are a limited company starting on 1st of April which is the beginning of the financial year in 2016.
I will now pass over to Robyn who will explain out vision statement etc
.........................( robyn with vision statement, premises etc, Nick our products )
Slide 6 - I will now talk about our competitors ( names and analysis of competitors on the slide)
We have picked 3 companies that are most similar to VOICE as our competitors, they are 7Nine, Fuse8 and Definitive.
- We are a much smaller company, unlike Fuse8 and therefore we guarantee a much more hands on relationship with our clients.
- We also have a print liaison who will have built a strong relationship with the printers meaning that we are involved/ over seeing from start to finish of a print job rather than just handing it over to the printers
- As mentioned, having just one print and client liaison were guarantee consistency and a friendly face all the way through each project.
- We are offering a 10% discount in the first year which means that we are cheaper than our competitors especially definitely who's price range is quite high
- Situated just on the southern outskirts of Leeds ( which means rent is not too expensive) and were are easily accessible via cars and trains
- We are also situated near printers we are working with such a Team Impression and Duffields
Slide 7- Marketing and Promotion
This is an over view of our marketing strategy analysed using the 4 P's.
Our budget for the 1st year is £ 5000 and we wanted to make sure that we reach as many of our target audience as possible.
Our main promotion is Advertising ( this is where most of the budget is spent)
We intend to advertise with the Yorkshire Post and the Leeds Yellow pages for a more local cliental and the Guardian Newspapers for a more national based group but still targeted at businessmen and broadsheet readers with a higher average income.
We also intend to advertise with design magazines such as Grafik and IdN. We also hope to get publish in such magazines.
(Slide 7.5)
The costings of the ads vary....
For example- for a large business card sized, mono print in the yellow pages is £351 and for a double page advertisement with an offered 70% discount is £1107
The purposes for these ads and publication vary as the yellow pages and newspapers are aimed more at clients directly contacting us and the design magazines is to get our name/ company seen by other designers and to get a reputation via these publications.
Other than that we also intend to....
- put commonly used keywords into our website so that our website appears on the top of the search engine eg. Google.
- enter design competitions monthly
- Entice customers with business cards that stand out
- customised direct mail for specific types of clients
I will now pass over to Ailsa Marrs who will talk abot Finances
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Slide 7- Marketing and Promoting
- set our budget to 5000 pounds
- therefore, try to cover as many of our target audience as possible under that budget
- need to be as effective as possible ( otherwise, waste of money)
- using the communication mix diagram to outline our marketing plan
- also using the 4 p's to analyse our marketing strategy
- We have established our target market to be medium-large commercial and cooperate businesses. with a high average income. Mostly would be regional but we are also aiming to expand our business to a more national based client group. Also, as this is branding design comnay.... most businesses that will be needing an identity and branding would be ones which are starting up
the 4 p's
- Product - our Graphic design services mentioned in the previous slides
- Pricing - we have already aimed to charge for our services less than our competitors with the 10 percent discount in the first year
Place - our advertisement are specified in the wanted areas of our target audience. eg. yellow pages, local news paper etc.
Promotion -...........
I would like to demonstrate this by using the communication mix diagram
advertising, this is where the most of our budget would be spent. we intend to advertise ourselves in the Yorkshire post and the yellow pages aimes for the more local client base. Then for a more national base group we intend to advertise with a broadsheet newspapers such as the Guardian as our target audience are most likely to be broadsheet readers and businessmen.
We also wanted to advertise ourselves in design magazine as to get our names out these with all our competitors and on top of that submitting our work ( with an agreement with our client) to magazines such as Idn, Grafik in order to get published.
the costings or these ads vary. For example, for an ad a size of a large business card in black and white in the yellow pages is 351 pounds. For an Idn magazine, we contacted their ad team and for a full page advertisement and a 70% offered discount, the ad would be 1107 pounds but the time scale, readers, location would also be different. the yellow pages is an annual publication where as Idn is quarterly. The purposes of each ad could also be very different, yellow pages for direct client contact where as an ad or a publication in a design magazine would give us the reputation which would be drive the clients to pick us over our competitors.
The most common way for people now aways to search for anything is google. te word is even in the dictionary as a verb!
We could, without extra costs, put in certain key words on our company website so that when people type in common words, anything related to graphic design, our website would be on the first page.
competition briefs is also another one of our promotional strategy. nothing is better than a good reputation. people don't like to be spend hours and hors going through every single potential employee, and the quickest way to judge someone is to see our many awards they have got. we intend to do one competition brief every month. However, some of them are open briefs and you can submit any work that you have done in the pas 6 months in a specific categories and
we need to make our company stand out.....
we need to entice our customers when we first meet them
- a memorable business card ( a play with our company name (VOICE) so that they remember it)
- direct mails to our target audience. we could create different types of direct mails which is aimed at certain type of companies. eg the companies who are more likely to be wanting annual reports, then the mail out would be designed to advertise our company about our annual report service but then also mentiona other services too.
- as our company offers a branding service......most businesses that will be needing an identity and branding would be ones which are starting up...so we could aim to advertise our business with banks. ie. make a deal with certain banks to advertisie our branding service with their packages etc.
-
Lastly, as mentioned in the previous slide, we have analysed our competitors and came up with unique selling points that make us better than our competitors and therefore that is also part of our marketing strategy. ( using the SWOT) analysis)
Write a marketing plan
Your marketing objectives
Your marketing objectives should be based on understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and the business environment you operate in. They should also be linked to your overall business strategy.
For example, suppose your business objectives include increasing sales by 10 per cent over the next year. Your marketing objectives might include targeting a promising new market segment to help achieve this growth.
For more information on how to identify the best opportunities, see the page in this guide on external and internal analysis for your marketing plan.
Objectives should always be SMART:
- Specific - for example, you might set an objective of getting ten new customers.
- Measurable - whatever your objective is, you need to be able to check whether you have reached it or not when you review your plan.
- Achievable - you must have the resources you need to achieve the objective. The key resources are usually people and money.
- Realistic - targets should stretch you, not demotivate you because they are unreasonable and seem to be out of reach.
- Time-bound - you should set a deadline for achieving the objective. For example, you might aim to get ten new customers within the next 12 months.
Plan your marketing tactics
Once you have decided what your marketing objectives are, and your strategy for meeting them, you need to plan how you will make the strategy a reality.
Many businesses find it helpful to think in terms of the four Ps:
- Product - what your product offers that your customers value, and whether/how you should change your product to meet customer needs.
- Pricing - for example, you might aim simply to match the competition, or charge a premium price for a quality product and service. You might have to choose either to make relatively few high margin sales, or sell more but with lower unit profits. Remember that some customers may seek a low price to meet their budgets, while others may view a low price as an indication of quality levels.
- Place - how and where you sell. This may include using different distribution channels. For example, you might sell over the internet or sell through retailers.
- Promotion - how you reach your customers and potential customers. For example, you might use advertising, PR, direct mail and personal selling.
For a more comprehensive approach, you can extend this to seven Ps:
- People - for example, you need to ensure that your employees have the right training.
- Processes - the right processes will ensure that you offer a consistent service that suits your customers.
- Physical evidence - the appearance of your employees and premises can affect how customers see your business. Even the quality of
Implementing your marketing plan
Your marketing plan must do more than just say what you want to happen. It must describe each step required to make sure that it happens.
The plan should therefore include a schedule of key tasks. This sets out what will be done, and by when. Refer to the schedule as often as possible to avoid losing sight of your objectives under the daily workload.
Resources
It should also assess what resources you need. For example, you might need to think about what brochures you need, and whether they need to be available for digital distribution (by email or from your website). You might also need to look at how much time it takes to sell to customers and whether you have enough salespeople.
Cost
The cost of everything in the plan needs to be included in a budget. If your finances are limited, your plan will need to take that into account. Don't spread your marketing activities too thinly - it is better to concentrate your resources to make the most of your budget. You may also want to link your marketing budget to your sales forecast. See our guide on how to forecast and plan your sales.
Control
As well as setting out the schedule, the plan needs to say how it will be controlled. You need an individual who takes responsibility for pushing things along. A good schedule and budget should make it easy to monitor progress. When things fall behind schedule, or costs overrun, you need to be ready to do something about it and to adapt your plan accordingly.
From time to time, you need to stand back and ask whether the plan is working. What can you learn from your mistakes? How can you use what you know to make a better plan for the future?
Researching your potential customer base
Once you know your groups of customers, you can look to conduct further research to see if there are any types of customer with more specific needs than others. For example, older customer groups may buy different types of products to younger groups.
'Market segmentation' can be an effective tool for this. It involves splitting your customer groups into smaller segments to find the sections of your customer base that will be most profitable to your business. You can segment customers by:
- lifestyle
- social class
- opinion
- activities and interests
- attitudes and beliefs
You should also consider the factors such as the following when deciding which marketing segments to target:
- Is the segment large enough to support your marketing goals?
- Does your business have the skills and expertise to deal with the chosen segment?
- Is there growth in the segment?
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