Marketing Basics for Designers: A Sourcebook of Strategies and Ideas

Business essentials and marketing strategies to help your firm survive and thrive . . .

As a design professional running your own small firm, you expect to wear many hats—designer, office manager, project manager—all in a day's work. But strategic marketer? No one prepared you for that! Marketing Basics for Designers is a long overdue resource for designers who need to become expert marketers fast. It provides solid practical advice on how to market your services, build your client base, and keep your customers coming back for more.

You'll learn how to establish your design niche and develop your own marketing plan to reach potential clients. You'll find techniques for networking and using your contacts with other professionals. And you'll find inside tips from 30 leading designers who have had to develop their own marketing methods to survive. Positively packed with all the details you need, Marketing Basics for Designers helps you ensure your firm's future success and shows you how to:

• Increase your firm's visibility within your community
• Use past successes to generate future business
• Perform beyond your clients' expectations
• Utilize a show home to market your talents
• Establish competitive and appropriate prices
• Work successfully with other professionals
• And much more

If you are recently out on your own, planning to start your own practice, or already managing your own small firm, this is one of the most important books you will ever add to your professional library.

Marketing Basics for Designers

What makes running a small design practice so much more challenging than working for one of the big firms? You have to attract your own clients and keep them, you're working with limited resources and personnel, and once you finally pull yourself away from your drawing board to concentrate on marketing your services, where do you begin? You can't just sit there wondering why you didn't learn more about marketing in design school.

Here's a book to help you out. With a clear, no-nonsense approach, Jane D. Martin and Nancy Knoohuizen address the full range of marketing problems and solutions from the unique perspective of the small design firm. They understand that you often find yourself short of the time, money, and know-how it takes to advertise your services effectively. Drawing on their own experience as well as interviews with more than 30 successful designers, Martin and Knoohuizen show you how to overcome these limitations and develop an effective marketing campaign.

This incomparable guide will help you put together your marketing campaign, map out your strategy, and attract the attention of potential clients. Not everyone is a born salesperson, but Martin and Knoohuizen let you in on trade secrets that really work and offer suggestions that will help you feel more comfortable marketing yourself. You'll learn to build relationships by effective use of referrals and word of mouth. You'll master the subtleties of clinching the deal and discover how to keep your newfound clients coming back for more.

You'll also receive sound advice from those who have been there before you. Charles Gandy, B. J. Peterson, Mark Hampton, and Cheryl P. Duvall are among the illustrious designers who share their wisdom, tips, and recommendations. You'll find out how these major designers have coped with many of the same problems you face now, and you'll learn from their mistakes as well as their triumphs.

Whether you're just starting out in the design business, yearning to break free and become your own boss, or trying to create growth in an established firm, Marketing Basics for Designers helps you develop a successful marketing strategy based on your own needs, capabilities, and expectations.