For most freelance designers I know, Point of Purchase and exhibition displays are great fun to work on. But they’re also hard to get right.

Displays only have ten seconds to grab attention and lure people over to the product or exhibition stand.

At the same time, the design must be consistent with the product’s or company’s brand image, and communicate an immediate sales message.

Here are 10 tips for effective POP display and exhibition design from a client’s perspective.

1. Always think about the customer.
Who will buy the product? Who will be drawn to the display? What are their likely ages, genders, occupations, incomes, personality types, goals, and aspirations? Use your knowledge of the customer to inform your design.

2. Remember that the headline is king.
Your headline or slogan is the mouth-piece of the display. Your design must reinforce the strengths of the headline to help communicate the brand-message immediately. Make sure the headline is easy to read from a distance.

3. Use compelling images for eye-catching impact.
Images have more impact if they are clear, specific, and definable. For example, an image of a telephone on a plain background is more likely to grab attention than an image of indefinable objects such as bubbles, wisps, or stripes.

4. Use faces.
Faces tend to grab more attention than inanimate objects. And they are especially effective in selecting the target audience.

5. Use the best quality images you can.
Urge your client to buy quality royalty-free photos instead of using cheap over-used images. I once visited a publishers’ exhibition where three stands featured the same royalty-free photo.

6. Link the visual theme to the product.
The look of the display must connect to the brand in some way, via the logo design, the message of the slogan, or the company’s brand image. It’s no use people remembering your design if they can’t attribute it to anyone.

7. Conceptualize a design that helps to demonstrate the product.
Make the design revolve around the product so the product commands maximum attention. Don’t hide or embed the product in any way.

8. Include the product in the visuals you use.
If you can’t frame the product, include it in the display visuals—then you can use effects to make the product look good. Make it 3D, make it glow or sparkle, make it jump out and look desirable.

9. Jazz-up your POP displays using different types of materials.
You don’t have to print on cardboard. Try using acrylic, canvass, or glass. Let your imagination run wild—just make sure the material you use is consistent with the product image.

10. Strive for a unique look.
Find out what other types of designs your display will be competing with, and use this to inform your approach. For example, if no one else is using fluorescent colors, and this is consistent with the brand image, use fluorescent colors to make your display stand out from the crowd. Maybe you can use lighting to your advantage. Gizmos like battery powered lighting or interactive features help give the display a unique look.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. He currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company and is the author of The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists.

© Shaun Crowley 2008

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Last time we practiced identifying and writing benfits to product features.

This week we continue writing benefit-led copy, culminating in an exercise in writing self-promotion copy for your design business.

This two-part tutorial will help you write powerful website copy, or copy for a mailer postcard.

By the end of the tutorial you will:

- Have a page of dynamic copy that really sells yourself as a freelance designer.

- Understand the fundamental rule at the heart of all copy: thinking in terms of benefits.

- See just how easy it is learn the craft of copywriting, so you can integrate it into your creative service!

Freelance designers working in the marketing sector are facing a new challenge.

The small design jobs they once thrived on—brochures, local newspaper adverts, small-business websites—are now being taken away by bigger design agencies looking to replace lost revenues.

This trend got me thinking about new ways one-shop designers can compete with the Big Fish.  I realized there’s an obvious answer. It’s learning how to write marketing copy.

 If you’re a freelance designer, you’re the perfect person to offer a copywriting service.

1/ Hiring a copywriter/designer is a mouth-watering prospect for many marketing clients. They avoid time-consuming briefing and service-searching from using separate freelancers.

2/ You can present yourself as a full-service design agency, rather than a one-shop designer.

3/ Copywriting is a useful skill to help you to promote your own services.

When I present the idea to designers on my circuit, their first reaction is: “Well, it sounds great, but I’m no marketeer.”

Not true, I tell them—you already have a good understanding of the marketing process…

- You design marketing communications materials
- You market yourself as a business
- You’ve probably written your own website
- You have an existing client base you can pitch your new copywriting service to.

“But I’m a designer, not a writer.” Sure—your business is in images, not words. But copywriting is a craft anyone can learn. There’s a formula you can work to, there are rules you can follow.

The time and commitment required for learning to write copy is not dissimilar to that involved in learning a new piece of design software.

OK, so you won’t turn into a scintillating copywriter overnight—but learn the tricks-of-the-trade and you can offer a competent writing service for your clients in as little as six weeks.

So how do you learn to write copy?
Start learning the basic rules of copywriting. Buy a good self-help copywriting manual and practice for an hour per day. Tell your clients you are learning to write sales copy—ask them to give you a simulated brief to work on. As you practice, pay particular attention to the five essential copywriting rules:

1. Highlight benefits. Say how the product or service benefits the reader. What do the features of the product mean to them?

2. Be specific. Replace descriptive language with facts. People react to concrete examples, they tend to ignore opinionated adjectives.

3. Write like you talk. Use the word ‘you’, like you’re talking to a friend.

4. Be succinct. Stick to one idea per sentence and one point per paragraph. Remove any repetition or unnecessary points.

5. Use headlines and visuals. Elevate the main benefits in your copy by presenting them as headlines. Also ask yourself if you can communicate your messages through photos or images instead of words. Most readers will scan publicity, so headlines and visuals need to work hard.

All copywriting rules can be learnt, including the five tips above—you don’t have to be a natural writer.

I have seen one-shop freelancers turn into successful agencies by integrating copywriting—people like Neil Tortorella , Dean Rieck, and Ayd Instone—all featured in my article The Rise of the Copywriter/Designer.

So why not give copywriting a try? To get you started, take my free tutorial or download my book 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. He currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company and is the author of The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists

The key to an effective contact strategy is to clearly define your target audience. Who exactly are your prospective clients? Which industries do they work in? Are they mostly small businesses or marketing managers in Fortune 500 companies?

The following article offers tips for contacting prospective clients in the marketing communications sector.

Define your prospective clients.
There is a saying in direct marketing that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your list. This is very likely to be true for your business too.

Only 20% of the companies in your area are likely to offer a good return on your marketing efforts. We can term these clients as ‘high-status’ contacts.

80% of the companies in your area are not likely to offer a good return on your marketing efforts. We can term these clients as ‘low-status’ contacts.

The time you spend pitching to prospective clients should be proportional to the status they fall into. As a rough rule, spend 20% of your time marketing your services to low-status contacts, and 80% of your time marketing to high-status contacts.

So how do we define high-status and low-status contacts in the marketing sector?

High-status contacts
High-status contacts are simply clients likely to give you on-going or lucrative work.

In the main, we’re talking about people working in big companies. More specifically, promotional coordinators and marketing managers in sales and marketing departments.

These contacts offer the best return on your marketing efforts because they have bigger budgets (which means more lucrative assignments), they have more numerous on-going projects, they are more likely to rely on freelancers, they might recommend you to other departments, and they are likely to move around within the industry, taking their contacts with them.

High-status contacts may also be managers of smaller businesses, whose design needs relate to your particular area of expertise-maybe because you have substantial experience designing within their industry sector.

High-status contacts require personalized marketing contact. Focus your energy on getting meeting time with them. Stay visible; mail them, call them now and again, and send emails once a month to remind them you’re out there.

Low-status contacts
Low-status contacts are either people who rarely call upon freelance designers, or people who only call upon freelance designers for small-scale ad-hoc items. It is therefore unlikely they will offer lucrative or on-going work.

Low-status contacts are likely to be general managers or marketing managers of small-to-medium-size businesses with small promotional budgets. Since they don’t produce a constant stream of promotional materials, it’s not worth focussing your marketing efforts on substantial personalized contact.

The exceptions would be existing clients or contacts who may call on you as their ‘designer of choice’, maybe because you provide a specialist service (as mentioned above).

You shouldn’t neglect low-status contacts because they make up such a large section of your potential client-base. Sure, only a tiny percentage of low-status contacts will offer a good return on your marketing efforts. But even if just 1% of low-status contacts offer on-going or lucrative design work, that 1% is a large enough list of prospective clients to make a real difference to your bottom line.

Target low-status contacts with an email or mailing campaign.
It’s not worth personalizing your contact with such a large section of low-priority contacts. Instead, look for ways of reaching these people on-mass.

You can do this by buying a data-list of low-status contacts, and emailing or snail-mailing the people on the list. In my forthcoming book “The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook” I’ll show you how to buy a data-list, how to set up a direct mail campaign, and how to write your email or DM letter.

Set up a database of high-status contacts.
High-status contacts require lots of personalized contact. But first you have to find them and gather their details.

Search engines are the simplest way of looking for high-status contacts. Simply type in “Marketing department” followed by your region, and look for contact names, email addresses, and telephone numbers of likely high-status marketing contacts working within big corporations.

It’s a good idea to build yourself a database of high-status contacts, and to keep it regularly updated by adding new contacts on a weekly basis.

A database allows you to update all your marketing activities, so you can see who you contacted, when you contacted them, and what their response was. It’s an essential organizational tool.

To set up your database spreadsheet, allow columns for company name, company description, contact name, contact position, address, telephone number, email address, website address, low-status/high-status (we’ll discuss the reasons for including this later), and update notes.

Spend as much time as you can Googling businesses and searching their ‘Contact Us’ pages, entering new high-status contacts into your spreadsheet as you go. Your aim is to have hundreds of contacts on your database. The law of averages dictates that around 5% of these will make promising leads.

Phone then email.
The standard strategy for contacting prospective clients is to phone first, then follow up with reminder emails. There are two reasons why it’s advisable to contact people in this order.

Firstly, in an age when spamming is an increasing problem, a lot of people only trust emails from known contacts. To become a “known contact” you need to introduce yourself either face-to-face or on the telephone.

Secondly, talking to contacts on the phone gives you a chance to ask what kind of design needs they have. You can record everything in the company description column of your database, so when you email the contact later, you can tailor your message to the specific needs of the contact. You can also include relevant links to your online portfolio, making your design offer more targeted to the individual.

When you have phoned a contact on your database, make sure you keep your update notes column up-to-date. Include the date you contacted, degree of interest in your offer, and when next to contact.

In some instances, a telephone conversation will reveal that the contact isn’t really high-status at all, but for some reason or other, falls into the low-status category. Rather than delete the contact from your database, just tag the contact as low-status for your own reference—you’ve gone to the trouble of calling, so a quick email now and again won’t be a waste of time. (That’s why it’s a good idea to include a high-status/low-status column in your database, as advised above.)

(My forthcoming book “The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook” includes a section on Telephone and Email Prospecting with tips and examples for effective cold-calling and follow-up email writing.)

Snail-mail then phone.
Cold-calling people can be a daunting experience. It is especially daunting if you’re calling really high-status contacts; when the stakes are high and one call can make a profound difference to your freelancing job opportunities.

In these cases, sending a teaser mailer through snail-mail a week before you call will help to break the ice, so when the contact picks up the phone, he/she already knows who you are.

Your teaser mailer could be a postcard with a thought-provoking line, a provocative question, or something else to arouse the recipient’s curiosity. For example: the front side of your mailer could read:

Heard the news?…

and the back could read:

…there’s a new freelance publicity designer in town

Then a short message at the bottom to introduce yourself:

Jon Woo— freelance publicity designer. www.callmewoo.com.

The secret of a good teaser mailer is to grab the recipient’s attention. You’re not trying to say everything about you and your service. Save that for your follow-up phone call. You’re simply gaining exposure by communicating your name and the core aspect of your design offer in a memorable way.

For example, one teaser I recently received from a touting freelancer was a Heinz tin-can, labelled “Double-concentrated talent”. The tin-can contained pureed tomato—the fact I tried to open the can reflects how successfully it caught my attention.

(In fact, I was so impressed by the self-promotion of this designer, I made it my mission to give him a graphic design assignment.)

The above article is adapted from my new book The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook, available for download at www.marketing-designers.com.

The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook includes additional chapters on telephone and email propsecting, setting up an Email campaign targeting data-list contacts, writing a self-promotion website, getting exposure in the newspapers, and creating client lock-in. View the complete contents and sample extracts at www.marketing-designers.com.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. He currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company and is the author of The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists.

Copyright (c) 2007 Shaun Crowley Publications

You’ve set up your online portfolio. Now you can direct potential clients to your website when you contact them.

But wouldn’t it be great if new clients contacted you?

In the following article I’ll show you how to conquer the search engines so prospective clients can find you online. We’ll look at four core areas: Choosing your keywords, Making the content of your website Googlable, Fulfilling the needs of browsers, and Getting other sites to link to you.

1. How to choose your keywords

By far the best tool for researching keywords is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). You can pay for access per week ($26), per month ($52), or per year ($260). It’s worth taking as much time as you can afford.

Amongst other things, Wordtracker allows you to type in words and presents you with an extensive list of connected keyword phrases with ratings. Ratings are based on the popularity of the keywords compared to the number of other websites competing for them. You’ll find that keyword phrases have better ratings than single keywords.

The Google Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal ) is also useful, (and free), though popularity/competition results are presented as rather ambiguous bar charts and not concrete percentages. My advice is to start with this tool, then take out a week’s usage of Wordtracker when your site is well established.

There are three obvious groups you could focus your keyword searches on:
- your specialism (graphic design, web-design, animated web design, etc)
- the sector you work in (marketing & advertising, publishing, products & packaging, etc)
- the area you cover (Los Angeles, Toronto, London, etc).

Also look for particular search phrases that target browsers might use, such as “Looking for”, “Search”, “Find”, “For hire”, and “Freelancer”.

You can also research keywords by checking the source code of well-ranked competing websites. If certain keywords are working for them there’s a good chance they’ll work for you too.

Make sure your page title contains a relevant keyword phrase. Your page title is the descriptive line that appears when your website appears in a Google search. It’s the line browsers rely on to judge the appropriacy of your site.

Try to get keywords into your URLs, e.g. www.callmewoo.com/designer_aspen. Keywords in URLs contribute considerably towards search engine ranking.

Search engines also use description tags to gauge the relevancy of websites. Your description should be riddled with good keywords.

Search engines no longer rate sites based on meta tags. Instead they look for keywords in the page title, URL, description tag, and the main body of the site.

But it’s a good idea to add meta tags–it’s likely Google use them to compare your site to others linking to you, the benefits of which we’ll discuss later.

2. How to make the content of your site Googlable

Research shows that browsers use text to evaluate a site, not images. So even though you are promoting yourself as a graphic designer, it’s the words that will reach out to new visitors ahead of your graphics.

The amount of text on your site is important. The more text you have, the more keywords there will be, and the more opportunities you’ll have to replace low-value phases with good keyword phrases.

Include keywords in prominent positions throughout your text. I prefer to write my text first then head-up sections of text with good keyword phrases. Search engines like headlines.

Group your keywords by setting up multiple website pages, each with a slightly different focus. Do this by categorizing your portfolio.

So for example, one page of your portfolio could focus on your brochure designs using keywords in your introduction copy such as: ‘direct selling promotional material’, ‘brochure’, printed publicity’, ‘corporate literature’ ‘freelance’, ‘design’, ‘designer’, ‘search’.

Another page could present samples of your book designs. Here, your introduction copy could include keywords such as ‘publishing’, ‘covers’, ‘childrens books’, ‘text books’, ‘layout’, ‘design’, ‘freelance’, ‘designer’, ‘search’.

So if a client looking for a children’s book designer typed in ‘children + design + freelance’, the relevant page of your portfolio will be ranked above your website home-page. This enables browsers to go straight to the page that is most relevant to them.

You can set up other pages to focus on specific types of keyword searches–maybe a page that focuses on the geographical region you cover. If you don’t cover one single region, maybe a page that introduces the ‘international’ aspect of your service. Or indeed, any other service you offer.

3. How to fulfill the needs of browsers

Offer something free. Roughly 75% of prospective clients searching for design-related topics are looking for something free to get a job done-–not necessarily to hire you.

You need to lure them towards your freelance offer. Give them something they can use so they remember you. When they really do need a freelance designer they’ve already remembered your URL.

There are a variety of things you can offer.

You can write free tutorials and self-help articles (like “how to brief a designer”, “how to get the most out of your graphic designer”, “What every client needs to know about their designer”). This presents you as a clever and competent designer.

You can offer free photos, graphics, illustrations, or visuals. Anything that your target browsers can download and make use of, and that demonstrates the strengths of your work at the same time.

You can offer free design consultation. You could promise to answer design-related questions within a designated time (e.g. browsers type in a question and submit their email address). Again, this helps to present you as a design expert. It also gives you access to potential clients’ email addresses, a very useful thing to have.

By doing any of the above, you are increasing the different keyword avenues browsers can take to reach your site. So in addition to the keywords on your portfolio pages, you also have pages with keywords such as ‘free tutorial’, ‘free royalty free images’, or ‘instant design advice’. These types of keywords are likely to be searched on a daily basis.

4. How to get other sites to link to you

Tailoring the content of your site is one aspect of Search Engine Optimization, but it’s not the priority. The ‘popularity’ of your site is the highest contributor to your ranking.

Popularity is based on the number and quality of websites linking to you.

The quality of a link is determined by its search engine ranking and by its relevancy to your website, something that is judged by the similarity of your keywords.

This means that ten links from small unconnected websites, such as local traders, are likely to be less useful that one link from a popular design-focussed website.

Start a blog. Blogging is perhaps the easiest way to pull potential clients towards your relevant portfolio pages and elevate your Google presence.

Blogs have two advantages. Firstly, they are linked to millions of websites, so usually have good Google rankings (which means they are quality incoming links).

Secondly, they offer you an easy way to submit new material, so you can be spontaneous and timely. For example, you could use your blog to review the week’s newspaper advert designs. This would appeal to marketeers (potential clients in the marketing sector), and presents you as a knowledgeable design commentator–someone worth hiring for the next big advertising campaign!

Adding comments, with links to your website, is an easy way to increase traffic to your site and improve your search engine ranking–especially if you comment on popular blogs.

Promote your website as a resource. Having an armory of visuals or articles is important for obtaining good quality incoming links.

Lots of top-ranking websites have ‘Resources’ or ‘Useful links’ sections. You need to be in there. So write up a description of your resources and send to the web editors of high-ranking sites. Try to include your main keywords within your link description copy, so meta-crawlers identify it as a ‘good link’.

Send out articles. Be a featured writer on a website that prospective clients hit on every day. You’ll not only get quality links to your site, you’ll also get your name out as an expert in your field.

Your articles can be adapted from your website or your blog entries. Just make sure they are useful and informative, leaving your website address and service description for your bio at the end of the article. Be sure to add a ‘call to action’ line at the end of your bio, persuaded interested readers to contact you (e.g. “Need a fresh new look? Ask about my design services. Email jon@callmewoo.com”.)

Next week we’ll take a look at e-self-marketing, with tips on how to to boost your freelancing job opportunities by emailing prospective clients.

The above article is adapted from my new book The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook, available for download at www.marketing-designers.com.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. He currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company and is the author of The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists.

Copyright (c) 2007 Shaun Crowley Publications

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freelance, designer, website, online marketing, self promotion, search engine, SEO, optimization, Google, business, services, keywords, portfolio,

Part 1 of “Utilizing Your Website to Sell your Freelance Design Services”

Your website is quite obviously your online portfolio. But the copy and structure of your website can also help you to drum up new business. When a potential client types your URL into their browser, they are not just looking to take a gallery tour of your past work, they want to know what you can offer them.

In this article I reveal 5 tips to make your website work a little harder for you. Take this advice and you should find more hits to your site resulting in new graphic design assignments.

PART 1:
How to Write Your Website

1. Make it easy to find relevant samples of work
Think about who you are targeting and then think about how you can categorize your portfolio for maximum accessibility. The greater the variety of different clients you target, the more general your categories should be. For example, if you’re targeting different sectors, you may want to segment your portfolio into a menu like this:

- Marketing and advertising
- Products and packaging
- Publishing
- Engineering

If you are targeting just one specific sector (such as marketing departments), you may want a menu like this:

- Advertisements
- Brochures, leaflets and flyers
- Websites
- Point of Sale design

Set up multiple website pages and break up your portfolio into these categories. Then link each category heading to the relevant page of your portfolio, so browsers can find what they want by clicking through. Remember, people are online to save time, so respect it.

2. Be specific about additional services you offer
As you have seen, the type of services you offer should dictate the structure of your website and how you present your portfolio.

But you may not be able to sample everything in your repertoire. Maybe you offer additional services that cannot easily be demonstrated in a portfolio. Maybe there are areas of design you are competent in but don’t have anything to show (in which case it’s a good idea to work on a mock-brief for the sake of expanding your portfolio).

This kind of information is too important to leave out, so make sure you include it in your homepage copy. Remember that busy people won’t necessarily ‘read’ your website, they are more likely to scan it for useful information. So don’t embed your additional services in lines of prose, elevate them to the top and set them into a list, like this

Other services I offer …
- Design concept development
- Design consultation
- Archiving

List everything you are prepared to offer to new clients. If you have other contacts who specialize in different areas of the artwork business, it’s a good idea to list their services too, like this.

Ask me about …
- Illustration
- 3D design
- Animated websites and presentations
- Photography
- Copywriting

This not only helps you establish yourself as a core contact for your clients, it will also encourage your friends to list you as one of their contacts, helping you to find more work.

If your list of services is looking thin on the ground, you may want to consider adding a few more strings to your bow. Here’s just a few more services you can offer without needing extra training:

Offer a proofreading service.
Clients often fear seeing mistakes when it’s too late to rectify them, especially in printed publicity. For $250 you can enrol yourself in a decent one-day proofreading course, or just print out the common proof-reading symbols and tutorials from the web. Then you can offer a service that will come as a relief to many clients.

Set up a good FTP site.
Clients in international companies often need to share design files with colleagues all over the world, where sending disks takes valuable time. Even big Fortune 500 companies may have archaic IT departments, where files stored on internal FTP sites may only have a limited retention time before they are automatically deleted to save space. If you can provide an easy way of transferring and sharing files, clients will want to know about it.

Set up an archive for your clients.
Store everything you receive and do for your clients. Then they can count on you for images and past files at any time, instead of going to expensive repro agencies. This boosts your chances of getting hired over someone less organized.

Archive all the royalty free images you use.
Over time, you’ll have a bank of royalty free photos that you can use in your graphic design assignments. Save your clients money on images, and you’ll be their designer of choice.

Offer a photography service.
Your design assignments may call for specific photos you can take yourself without the help of a freelance photographer. In most cases, you don’t need expensive equipment, just need a decent digital camera and a few good lights. Read up on your photography, buy the bare minimum, and offer ‘photography’ as one of your additional services.

Offer a copywriting service.
Copywriting is a necessary skill to have in order to promote your freelance services, so it makes sense that you spend some time brushing up on the craft.

It’s also the perfect service to integrate into your design offer, especially if you design for the marketing sector. In the promotions arena, design and copywriting go hand-in-hand. Offering copywriting not only saves your clients time and money, it also promises better results because one person is handling both the “look” and the “voice” of the publicity.

Most designers are put off from copywriting, but unlike other forms of writing, it’s easy to learn. My free tutorial takes you through the first steps (and shows you how to write good self-promotion copy in the process).

If you’d like to learn more about copywriting, keep an eye on my forthcoming blog entries, and check out my e-book at www.copywriting-designers.com.

3. Give a brief summary of each item in your portfolio.
Obviously, browsers will be more interested in seeing your work than reading about it. But it’s often helpful for clients to know what the original brief was, who the design was targeted at, and what the results were. This gives them a sense of how well you can respond to a brief. So with each sample of work, add a caption that summarizes:

- Who it’s for – How does the look of the design respond to the taste/needs of the target audience? What age are the target audience? Male or female? Nationality? Social demographic? What do they want to know?

- What the design needed to achieve – What was the purpose of the design? To sell? To inform? To instruct? Were there any special requirements in the brief that informed how this should be achieved?

- The result – Did your design help your client to achieve his/her goals? If so, can you add any specific or statistical information as to how it did this? Can you add any good testimonials from your client?

4. Personalize your introduction copy.
Your website will need some introduction copy to head-up your homepage. Too many designers waste this opportunity by writing inappropriate copy about themselves. ‘Me, Me, Me’ copy isn’t very attention-grabbing—your potential clients want to know what you can do for them.

To do this, you need to build a picture of your potential clients. What kind of work are they in? What can you do to help them do their job better? What are they looking for in a designer? You need to know what will appeal to them in order to whet their appetites for your work, so do your research.

When you come to write your introduction copy, be sure to use the word ‘you’ as much as possible. This helps to establish a friendly tone of voice that speaks to the individual not the audience.

5. Think about your offer.
As mentioned above, prospective clients want to know what you can do for them. To address this, you need to know what their needs are, then say how your service responds to those needs.

Start by drawing up a features/benefits table for yourself (exemplified below), then use this information to inform your homepage copy.

Example of ‘features’ and ‘benefits’:

Feature
I specialize in print, web, 3D, and Flash design.
Benefit
I work across media, so you get one consistent look for your whole campaign, with everything in on time.

Feature
I use state of the art computing equipment.
Benefit
I have the best equipment, so you can be sure your project will run smoothly right up to finished piece.

Feature
I have international customers.
Benefit
My design has global appeal, so you get more effective promotions in your overseas markets.

Feature
I include proof-reading as part of my service.
Benefit
My free proof reading service saves you time and money, and gives you the confidence that your finished publicity will be free from costly mistakes.

For more help on identifying your features and benefits, take my free tutorial.

The above article is adapted from my new book The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook, available for download at www.marketing-designers.com.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant, and currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company. He is the author of The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists.

Copyright (c) 2007 Shaun Crowley Publications

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Looking for graphic design freelancing job opportunities? Work-from-home career opportunities in the web design field?  Don’t waste time searching for freelance graphic design job postings. You can find more work if you present yourself as a business and contact companies direct. 

In the world of freelance, you don’t need to be the greatest artist who ever lived. You just need to know how to reach new clients. In the following article I’ll show you how to get highly-paid business by freelancing in the marketing communications sector.

So if you are currently working or studying as a designer and you want to go your own way, simply follow the tips below. You’ll find a step-by-step plan of action from targeting clients, to self-marketing, to getting ahead of the freelance competition.

Start with your portfolio
Starting a freelance artwork business is a bit like opening a shop. Your shop window is the work you present to clients in pitching meetings. So your first task is dress your shop window—by creating an impressive portfolio.

Gather together all your work. Include anything and everything you have done for past clients or at college. Then write captions that summarize the brief that each piece of work responds to. Add any good feedback you received.

Buy a sturdy stand-up presentation folder and add your work to it. Devote one sleeve to one project. Add examples of your work and reinforce with captions so your prospective clients have something to read—and you have prompts to help you explain your work whilst pitching.

If you don’t have enough work to show in a portfolio (i.e. under ten projects), you may want to work on some simulated briefs—that is, make up a brief and produce a visual that responds to it. Prospective clients won’t care if the briefs are real or not, they just want to see how good your work is.

Build yourself a website
Unless you are a web-designer, creating your own website is not essential, although it does give you some advantages. A website will help you to communicate your portfolio via email without sending attachments (promotions controllers will be suspicious of emails with attachments from unknown addresses—a link to a website is preferable).

If you have no experience of designing websites, don’t be put off, you can buy inexpensive templates online (www.templateshome.com is a good place to start, where you can buy smart website templates for around $50), and buying a dot.com address and uploading it onto a website browser should cost no more than $50.

Summarize your services and your ‘unique offer’ on your home page. Include all your contact details on a separate page, and the best of your portfolio on another page. Now you’re ready to roll.

How to frugally market your business

Once you have arranged your portfolio, you need to design some publicity for yourself. There are two essential items you need, luckily they are not expensive to produce. They are business cards and mailer postcards.

Get the most out of your business cards
Business cards are your most important publicity items. They tell people how to contact you (don’t rely on email signatures—clients will wipe off your emails without hesitation and will not be able to contact you when a job comes up).

Executives normally keep vendor business cards in a case or card-box. Make sure you’re in it. And make sure your card has ALL your details: mailing address, telephone, cell phone number, email, and (if applicable) website address.

Your business card should be smart, clean, and easy-to-read. Don’t be too flamboyant. I know a designer who had his details printed from left-to-right on one side, and his details printed backwards from right-to-left on the other side. Whilst filing it away, his biggest potential client clipped it onto a backer card inside out. When she called upon it later she couldn’t make sense of it. Consequently she trashed the card and called another designer.

Print plenty of cards. An extra thousand won’t break the bank. Give several cards to new prospective clients at meetings (they may give them to their colleagues), and if you have existing clients or contacts, make sure they are well stocked with your cards so they can recommend you. Add a few cards in with your invoices. Leave a few cards in company reception areas, at sports clubs, and anywhere where your prospective clients are likely to congregate. Get them in people’s hands.

Market yourself with mailer-postcards
You may want to print some mailer postcards at the same time you print your business cards. Mailer postcards are a great way to show off your creative talents and get noticed. In an age when executives are familiar with receiving emails from scouting freelancers, postcards received through snail-mail are a novel and memorable way to sell your freelance services.

Showcase your best visual/visuals on side one, then write some marketing copy to sell your services on side two (and remember to include your full contact details). Your copy should focus on the benefits your clients will get from using you. For guidance on writing a persuasive mailer postcard take this free tutorial.

Think about who you are targeting
While you are waiting for your cards to print, you need to research the kind of companies to target for freelance work. Aim high; large corporations with multiple departments make better leads than small or medium-sized businesses. The work you get from a big company is likely to be more lucrative and on-going. You may also get internal recommendations across departments. One company can be a client for life and effectively pay off your mortgage.

Do a Google search for all the big companies who have offices within a reasonable driving distance, and examine each website for contacts. Build yourself a database of contacts in a spreadsheet including the names, titles, email addresses, mail addresses, and telephone numbers of all key sales and marketing contacts within your target companies.

Follow a rigid marketing strategy
Start by sending out your postcards to all the addresses on your database. A week after drop-date, send each of your contacts a personalized email asking if they use freelancers and requesting a meeting to discuss your offer. Include a link to your website so contacts can view your portfolio. If you don’t have a website, ask your contact to reply for samples of your work, then send a maximum of three pdfs or jpegs that total under 2MB (anything over this will be deleted when inboxes get crammed).

There are three things to consider when you are sending emails to prospective clients on your database. First, always send personalized emails to one contact at a time. Never send a round-robin. Second, keep your first email short and polite, asking for permission to send over some samples. Never attach visuals to your introductory email, your email will be deleted as spam. Third, set up an automatic email signature, so your prospective clients can quickly access your contact details. Although most people use business cards to find vendor addresses, some people use email to look up contacts.

Follow up your email with a phone call the next day to get the contacts’ feedback to your samples. Ask if the department uses freelancers and what creative requirements the department has. If your contact regularly uses freelancers, request a meeting to discuss your full portfolio. If your contact doesn’t use freelancers, ask for another contact within the organization who does. Use your database to keep track of all the people you have contacted and when you contacted them, so you know which people to follow up on and when.

Contact plenty of people, and the law of averages states you’ll get plenty of meetings booked.

Present yourself as client-focused whilst pitching
The key to a successful pitching meeting is to be well-prepared and client-focused. Before you travel to the company office, examine the company’s website so you know what kind of brief your contact would give you if you get lucky. Tailor your portfolio for the company by ordering your most relevant work first (that’s why you should use retractable sleeves in your portfolio, allocating one project to one sleeve).

At the meeting, make sure your pitch is relevant. Ask to see the company’s existing publicity, then talk about your most similar graphic design assignments.

Give your prospective client enough information to help them see what you can do for them. With each item of work you present, summarize the original brief, say how you creatively interpreted the brief, and give a sense of how effective the project was. Don’t go into a full project analysis unless asked, and don’t assume your prospective client will want to know the intricacies of your portfolio.

At the end of your meeting, ask if you can meet colleagues in the same department, ask for contacts in other departments, and hand out plenty of business cards. When you get home, send a thank-you email to your contact, reminding them to keep you in mind, and update your activities in your database so you know when to contact them next.

Be persistent
It’s important to remain visible. Promotions controllers are more likely to outsource work to people they meet in person. Pretend that you will be in the area one day and ask to ‘pop in’ for a brief chat—you may have more luck arranging informal ad-hoc meetings than formal put-it-in-your-diary meetings. When you visit a company, remember to take your portfolio and plenty of business cards. You never know who you might meet.

You’ll find that prospective clients often say things like “I have no projects at the moment, but I’ll keep you in mind”. Don’t get frustrated, and certainly don’t beg for work on the phone. Just make a note in your database to keep track of responses, then send reminder emails to contacts every month, just so they really do keep you in mind. Give them a phone call every couple of months; sooner or later they will give you work.

Freelance graphic design pricing

Typical publicity designers earn between $40 and $75 per hour (£25-£40). If you’re good you should think about charging $50 per hour, then look to increase by $5 each year depending on your situation.

Clients will often ask you to quote on a project. Estimate the total number of hours you’ll spend working on the first proof, add an extra hour-per-page for artwork corrections, then add another two hours for likely time-additions such as downloading large files for print. Remember to charge for any time you spend working on the project, including downloading and disk burning time. (Unlike freelance copywriters, designers don’t usually charge for meeting time.)

If you have fixed a price and the client changes the original brief spec half-way through the graphic design assignment, tell your client that you will bill an additional hourly rate for any extra time you spend.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant, and currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company. His new book 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists is available for download at www.copywriting-designers.com

Copywright (c) 2006 Shaun Crowley Publications

design, article, freelancing job opportunities, work from home career, job postings, freelance

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