FOCUSING ON THE TREATMENT, NOT THE MEDICINE

A few months ago I had a weird bug bite on my arm. Didn’t seem all that out of the ordinary at the time, but after a few days I noticed some strange discoloration. I won’t ruin your lunch with the details, but it was clear something funky was going on. I waited longer than I should have to get it checked out because, well, I’m a pretty stubborn dude. I was also secretly hoping I would wake up one morning with superpowers.

After it became obvious I wouldn’t be climbing any walls or shooting lasers from my eyes, I caved and made an appointment with my doctor. Turns out it was no big deal. I walked out of the office with a prescription for a topical cream, and in a few days my skin was back to its normal translucent, pasty-white Irish hue.

But the experience got me thinking about how we do business in the “creative” world. More often than not, a client will approach me with a request for a specific tactic. Usually it’s something along the lines of “I want to re-do my website.” In some ways, it’s a little like going in to the doctor’s office and asking specifically for a certain topical cream. The website may be the medicine, but what about the overall treatment?

Especially in those first few meetings, it’s important to find out what hurts. Your website may very well be in rough shape. But the bigger hurt is that your company is looking outdated compared to your competition, or you want to reach more customers, or whatever your company’s bug bite looks like. It’s important to pinpoint that initial hurt before zeroing in on a specific medicine (tactic). From there, we can work on the treatment. That may be your website, or getting more engaged in social media, or increasing your presence in a particular industry space, or whatever other type of medicine will help cure the ailment.

Ultimately, it's about a holistic approach.

Perhaps it's helpful to look at your marketing and communication problems more like a trip to the doctor, and less like the drive-through at McDonalds. Find where it hurts, and set up a treatment plan that delivers long-term care, not just a one-off, quick fix.

(QUALITY) CONTENT IS KING

You’ve probably run into the “over-sharer” online—that Facebook friend that posts an update every 20 minutes about the baby drool on the couch or the constant Instagram posts featuring every meal they’ve ever eaten. There’s an interesting lesson here for the business world: these over-sharers may be on to something. Sorta.

It goes back to the old advertising maxim that frequency builds awareness. Thanks to frequent Facebook posts, that high school classmate you haven’t thought about in 20 years is suddenly on your mind, multiple times throughout the day. But just because they pop up in your thoughts more often doesn’t necessarily mean those are positive experiences. How you personally value the content they’re sharing often shapes your perception of them, and if that perception becomes too negative or irrelevant … poof! Unfriend, unfollow, unlisten.

Once that happens, the clutter of irrelevant messages has permanently closed any way of sharing what may have been deemed valuable or useful information. Too much that didn’t matter enough. Of course, on the other side of the fence, that old college roommate that posts three updates a year, regardless of how engaged you are with what they are sharing, is out of the conversation the other 362 days.

Your business presence in online spaces, particularly social media, works much the same way. If you’re sharing content that is of little value to your customers, it doesn’t matter how frequent it is. In fact, you may just be reminding them that you don’t have much to offer.

But if you’re not reaching out through social media at all, you’re missing a chance to be on your customers’ minds with regularity. And if you’re not on their minds, you’re far less likely to influence their actions (i.e., “Buy our stuff!”).

Maybe the lesson to be learned is striking a balance: Frequent sharing of quality content. That means blogs, tweets, updates, emails and a laundry list of other touch points loaded with content that is valued by your customers.

GETTING TATTOOED AT WALMART

QUESTION: Do you risk permanently damaging your brand by choosing services based solely on price?

Let me start by saying I am a small business owner. Very small (by design). I get it. Budgeting is always a big deal, and most days it’s one of the biggest sources of stress. If I can cut corners and get by with the least expensive product, I’m usually all for it. To a point.

Your brand is the personality and spirit of your company. Don’t skimp when it comes to how you present it to the world. Nail that first impression, and play bigger than you are; it may just be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Invest in your brand. That means your logo, your tagline, your website, your business cards, and essentially anything that could be a customer touch point.

Saving money by having your neighbor’s college kid design your logo for a few hundred bucks usually gives you, well, a logo that looks like it was designed for a few hundred bucks. That’s who your company becomes to the world. Does that accurately portray what you’re bringing to the party? I’m guessing no.

LIVING THE CLICHÉ

We’ve all heard the clichés about buying on price alone. My personal favorite: You can have it good, fast or cheap. Pick any two.

In general, you really do get what you pay for. Case in point: I recently worked with a great client—a fellow small business owner— who was operating on a pretty tight budget for a few tradeshow banners. The banners themselves weren’t going to be cheap to produce, but to help seal the deal the vendor offered free design with the purchase.

I normally handle the design directly for this particular partner—we had worked together re-branding his company with his website serving as the cornerstone, and a certain look and feel had already been established. My schedule was a little tight that week, and it seemed a fairly straightforward design assignment for the vendor.

After a few days, he received the digital proof for the banners. As you may have guessed, the design was butchered. As in the headline may as well have been in Comic Sans.

Especially in a setting like a tradeshow, where a lot of potential customers would be exposed to the company and products for the first time, showing up with the banners in that state would have been more damaging to the brand than if there were nothing in the booth at all.

While being considerably short on time, I was able to redesign the banners and the tradeshow ended a success. In truth, the win was due more to his salesmanship and great line of products, but the banners helped set a certain tone that established his company as a major player.

MORE SNIPER, LESS SHOTGUN

I suspect nearly anyone working within a set budget finds themselves in a similar quandary: a lot of materials produced cheaply and of low quality, or a few materials produced at a high level. Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution; you’ll have to experiment and find the right mix for your business.

While that solution is usually a moving target, it helps to have a partner that understands your budget, and works with you to make the most of it.